Sarah’s sister in law went to an Ontario ER with abdominal pains about 7 weeks ago.
The CT showed spots of cancer in her liver.
For the next 7 weeks, nothing happened. No in depth investigations. Pathology was delayed. No definitive diagnosis.
No treatment. Nothing. Then she died. This family is devastated but also angry and looking for options.
This is not acceptable in any healthcare system, not even in Canada.
It is clear to anyone who has been around our healthcare system for more than a decade, that we have an urgent need for more capacity.
This won’t be fixed by the accelerated licensing of foreign nurses.
It won’t be fixed by increasing the number of medical school candidates.
You can’t stop the older doctors and nurses from retiring.
You can’t stop healthcare workers from leaving the industry.
It won’t be fixed by doing the same old, same old.
And in today’s National Post a professor of economics from Lloyla University described the Canadian government’s mismanagement as the prime cause of our failed healthcare system.
If you keep the marketplace and market forces out of healthcare, then the healthcare system will eventually fail. And it has failed, just ask Sarah.
The economist cited Fogo Island as an example of how the system as it is currently configured has failed rural Canada.
So what are health activists to do?
Here is the gossip that I have heard about.
Class action litigation. Yes, that is class action litigation. And big claims for damages. In the hundreds of millions or possibly billions of Canadian dollars.
Patients dead or alive and their family members will be hiring class action litigators to start class action legal actions against the governments.
The targets will be both the Federal and Provincial Ministries of Health and Finance.
They have a duty to provide capacity. If not, then they are responsible for damages. That will be the argument.
So what can the provinces do to mitigate before the temperature gets turned up.
The provinces could jointly self insure to fund out of country treatments for patients when capacity is not available for these patients to be treated in a timely and comprehensive manner in Canada.
The provinces could pool funds together to ensure that there is adequate capital. The Feds could top it up.
Each province has an out of country funding office that has the infrastructure, staff and skill sets to select and fund the treatments in other countries and not necessarily the US which is a very high cost provider of care.
This process will be emergent.
I will be looking forward to articles in the National Post to keep me updated on what evolves.