The hospital staff were incredible, doing the best they could in a trying situation, but one cannot escape the reality that our health-care system is fundamentally broken.
So Jeremy, your first stop should be to talk to Friends of Medicare and Dr Paul Parks, an Emergency Department doc who tours the province in his off time, such as that is, giving those interested the real lowdown on what is happening. He is a former president of the Alberta Medical Association. He has plenty of facts and figures as well as potential solutions to the problems in our healthcare. On big problem, just to address the issue of how much we are paying in Canada, or at least in Alberta, is that some surgeries are already being outsourced to private clinics where the cost of the surgery is several times more expensive than using public facilities. And those public facilities in some cases stand idle because the people to staff them are MIA. We just do not have enough doctors, nurses, physician assistants to make it happen. My son waited 12 hours at the Misericordia for “emergency” surgery in June. He is disabled and had a very hard time understanding why he had to wait so long without food or water. Staff were kind. Docs great, especially the surgeon, who came in once an OR was available and staffed, at 9:30 pm and after a full day on his feet to perform the procedure. But like you, in spite of it all, he was lucky. He survived and with luck will be healthy going forward.
Sorry to hear you got hurt, but glad you had first hand experience and will hopefully keep writing about the health care problems in Alberta and how the UCP keep making the problem worse.
So Jeremy, your first stop should be to talk to Friends of Medicare and Dr Paul Parks, an Emergency Department doc who tours the province in his off time, such as that is, giving those interested the real lowdown on what is happening. He is a former president of the Alberta Medical Association. He has plenty of facts and figures as well as potential solutions to the problems in our healthcare. On big problem, just to address the issue of how much we are paying in Canada, or at least in Alberta, is that some surgeries are already being outsourced to private clinics where the cost of the surgery is several times more expensive than using public facilities. And those public facilities in some cases stand idle because the people to staff them are MIA. We just do not have enough doctors, nurses, physician assistants to make it happen. My son waited 12 hours at the Misericordia for “emergency” surgery in June. He is disabled and had a very hard time understanding why he had to wait so long without food or water. Staff were kind. Docs great, especially the surgeon, who came in once an OR was available and staffed, at 9:30 pm and after a full day on his feet to perform the procedure. But like you, in spite of it all, he was lucky. He survived and with luck will be healthy going forward.
Sorry to hear you got hurt, but glad you had first hand experience and will hopefully keep writing about the health care problems in Alberta and how the UCP keep making the problem worse.
Oh, so sorry to hear this. I haven’t read the story yet as I wanted to wish you well first.
Nooo. I’m glad it’s not worse, but ouch.
This is almost exactly what we experienced at the Alex a year ago. And I think about Prashant Sreekumarall the time.