As Albertans, it seems we have been told countless times that our province spends more on health care, per capita, than any other. This year the total is expected to be $18.9 billion. That’s about .8 per cent less than was spent last year, but by just about anyone’s standards that remains one heck of a lot of cash.
That’s why it is still puzzling, two decades after Ralph Klein’s government took a broad axe to the system, slicing jobs, closing hospitals and promising efficiencies we still hear stories like that of St. Albert resident Don Sinclair. As he told reporter Doug Neuman in Saturday’s Gazette, he recently went to our own Sturgeon Community Hospital for a cardiac appointment. Once there, he was sent to Sturgeon’s emergency room to have an infection treated. He was sent home seven hours later with instructions to return in three days to have some gauze removed. When he dutifully returned he was told there wasn’t a chance they could see him and to return the next day. When he did, he had to wait for another seven hours. Don Sinclair was treated, and as far as we know, finally returned home in better shape than when he got there.
In the hospital’s defence, administrator Wendy Tanaka Collins says that while average wait times of 72 hours at the hospital to be admitted to an in-patient bed may appear to be among the worst in the province, that doesn’t mean that patients in waiting rooms and hallways haven’t been treated.
Still, one has to wonder where all of the health care money has gone – to big salaries, equipment, unnecessary tests, administration or drugs? Health Minister Stephen Mandel appears to agree as he looks for ways for the bloated system to absorb nearly $1 billion in extra costs this year without receiving any extra revenue.
One significant issue with emergency departments is that all sorts of people who don’t need emergency treatment, but don’t have anywhere else to turn often use them. They should be at a clinic separate from a hospital and the clinics should be available for extended hours. Another issue may be that protocol appears to demand that emergency room staff wait for doctors to see a patient and make the call – even when other staff such as nurses can recognize the problem and how to begin fixing it.
In fact, once a doctor gets to a patient that's exactly what happens. Yes, his arm appears broken and we need to get it X-rayed. Yes, the X-ray shows it's broken, now we need to get a casting nurse/technician to cast it. Now please come back in two weeks so we can see how it's doing, then again in six weeks and finally again at eight weeks to have the cast removed.
We understand that hospitals must deal with emergencies of all types and that it is up to the professional staff to decide who gets treated right away and who doesn’t. We also understand that they may well have decided that Sinclair’s condition was far less threatening than what other patients may have been suffering. But 14 hours in an emergency room? That is more than a slight inconvenience as it begs the question: Has that $19 billion bought us a Cadillac system as some might say, or one made by Lada?
