Canadian hospitals are in crisis. Across the country, its emergency departments (EDs) are overwhelmed, beds are overwhelmed, and patients are dying. Angus Reid this fall poll It found that 29% of adults reported having “chronic difficulty” accessing health care. In Ontario, Canada’s largest province, a recent environmentals poll shows. 80 percent of respondents believe their state’s healthcare system is at risk.
COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and influenza the patient is overwhelmed labor shortage Facilityinclude Children’s hospitalWhile many news reports suggest that the system’s inability to cope is a problem with too many patients in the wake of the COVID backlog, it’s actually a recurring problem. Looking back over the past few decades, we see that the emergency department in this country experiences this problem of too many patients and too few beds almost every five years.
The problem is not patient numbers. The problem is that decades of austerity have left the system bare.
hospitals across Canada airborne patient, near emergency departmentExpand Consultation hours of family clinic, and subject patients to long and dangerous waiting times. Average ED waiting time in the province, according to reports available in Quebec. Canadian Health Information Institute (CIHI) is 4.9 hours. In Montreal, a mother made headlines after her infant son fell ill and waited 90 minutes for treatment. difficulty breathingEmergency departments are so overwhelmed that state governments new app, the Guichet d’accès à la première ligne, directs people to their primary care physicians to relieve pressure on emergency care. The app was quickly overwhelmed with tens of thousands of calls.
In Ontario, years later, bed closure, according to CIHI, the average waiting time for ED is 3.3 hours. However, some hospitals are extending it. waiting time up to 40 hours.ambulance off road time It has increased as well, and in some cases up to 151 minutes.
According to CIHI, Manitoba has the longest average wait time in Canada at 5 hours. At Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg, a couple waited six hours in the ambulance room, where he dealt with low temperatures and ambulance exhaust. Under treatment for pneumoniaIn Saskatchewan, last month the Saskatchewan Emergency Medical Services Chief Said CTV News reported, “People collided in the back hallway and had to wait 45 minutes, hours to get to their beds. Some even went into cardiac arrest.”
In Alberta, during the worst of the fall flu season, average wait times were 3.1 hours, according to CIHI. 17 hours at a children’s hospital“People sitting in the waiting room who died in the waiting room have died,” says Dr. Warren Thirsk. Said CTV News Edmonton. “We see people suffer untold hours of uncontrolled pain, fear of knowing there is something wrong with them and not being cared for. .”
According to New Brunswick, CBC News88-year-old Karen Totten was forced to wait in a supply closet for out-of-hospital care. is needed,’ said her daughter.
The original purpose of the Emergency Department was the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP). Note, assess and manage patients over 2-3 hours. However, as CAEP further observed, ED congestion and lack of access “is not a new problem.”
In fact, in the last 40 years, the problem has reappeared in the news. headline 1987 “Lawn Emergency Ward Approval”; 1999 “Worse ER Congestion”; 2004 “Delayed ER Overcrowding”.
Since the introduction of Medicare across Canada, frivolous or “general complaints”, “Elderly patients with nowhere to go,” Drunk drivinglack of “common sense” by eggnog, bad parenting, opioid crisis, influenza, H1N1, SARSand more are blamed for the “overcrowding” of ED.
During this time, news outlets, government officials and think tanks have proposed various “measures” to reduce waiting times. However, all of these proposals are lesser-variety austerity-influenced solutions.
In 1977, a report to the Metro Toronto Hospital Association suggested closing emergency departments at night and during “off-peak” hours to save beds during peak hours. In 1989, Ontario’s emergency medical program opened hospitals throughout Ottawa to new “bed managementA policy to “release the bed faster”. In the 1990s, Quebecof”tactical intervention groupempowered to act as “a kind of”emergency room policeSanctions hospitals that allow patients to occupy beds for more than 48 hours.
More recently, the Liberal Party of Ontario “minimum” program spending per capita Introduced in any province of Canada Pay for results Program, ED funding to reduce wait times.Ontario joins Another prefecture To help “coachhospitals that adopt “Lean” management protocol speed up Medical facilities, much like Toyota speeds up the factory floor.this means tracking nurse Stopwatchendless search for “savings” Imaging and testing, “standardized” staffing, etc.
Over the past year, as COVID-19 cases declined, calls to resolve the health system crisis prompted a new round. call for Privatization and outsourcing proceduresHowever, Canada’s health care system is forced to revise its operating standards every decade as the number of sick and injured people outnumbers its resources. “Overcrowded Hospital” is an appetizer.
as a CAEP Observed 2002: “ED overcrowding is primarily a result of inpatient bed shortages. Moreover, although the current crisis is said to be the result of cases of RSV and COVID-19, it is not a crisis of “selective treatment” or out-of-hospital care. These are acute and critical care patients, the primary responsibility and largest item in Canada’s healthcare budget.
As toronto star The current crisis is closely related to the reduction of medical resources. Canada had 1,233 hospitals in 1952. Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act146,032 beds.
The Medicare Act of 1966 rapidly expanded Canada’s medical capacity, creating a 50/50 split between federal and provincial governments, especially in the area of hospital and bed construction. By 1970, however, the Federal Liberals were looking to cut the budget.Government 1970 economic council was suggested measures “Discouraging the use of medical services”deterrent feeIn 1977, the 50/50 cost sharing program began. quiet end And the transfer eroded over the decades that followed. This accelerated in his 1990s, when the Liberal Party implemented one of the following: the strictest austerity program in the industrialized world — Reduced remittances to the state close to 50%.
The results of these cuts are clear. By 2015, Canada had 719 hospitals with 93,595 beds, a decrease of 514 from 1952. population In 1952 it was 14.5 million. In 2015, it was 35.7 million. Whatever the increase in capacity since 2015 was clearly not enough.of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) statistics In 2020, the most recent year of data available, Canada had 702 hospitals with just 96,849 beds.data from Chihi shows a 20% increase in the total number of beds from 76,250 in 2019-2020 to 91,511 in 2020-21, which is still below what has been seen in previous decades.
The current shortage will occur during negotiations for the following products: health pact between the federal government and the states. The same prime minister eager to cut and privatize the health care system is asking for more money because the federal government has a larger tax base. However, this does not mean that the priority will change.as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Said CBC News, ‘There’s no point in spending money on a broken system.’
Canada’s universal health care system is touted as Canada’s most “important institution”. national treasureCanadian business owners and their politicians was always enthusiastic Limit it, cut it, weaken it. Liberal Trudeau and Canada’s various right-wing prime ministers are just the latest iterations. After all, this is the playbook for all privatization advocates everywhere. They deplete public goods, wait for them to malfunction, and argue that a free market is needed to solve the problem.
Much is complicated about healthcare, but the current crisis is not. After decades of cuts, Canada’s public health care resources are inadequate to meet the needs of the general public. on the other hand, crisis and disease Bringing people to ED can be complex and multifaceted, and these departments are underfunded and resource-poor, making them burdensome. Halting the collapse of the healthcare system and resolving the country’s hospital crisis requires resources for healthcare workers, services and patients.
