- people can no longer admire my legs during my morning walks -- it's now too cold to wear shorts
- kids are back at school and you begin to notice the unmarked police cars around the various school zones
- you suddenly get rattled out of your chair the Tuesday following the closing of the CNE, as the Snowbirds do a low-level fly-by in the Durham Region
There were huge celebrations and welcoming committees for the magnet in Pickering and Ajax during the last week of August. Congrats indeed to everyone involved!
Notwithstanding the tremendous benefits of the above, I'm wondering if we shouldn't also be using our health care dollars at the front-end, i.e. for preventative health education; nothing would please me more in a few years to read that this new MRI has been under-utilized and the major reason for the latter being attributed, with utmost certainty, to healthier communities!
One can understandably tire from the constant media barrage of articles telling us stuff similar to the following:
"Hospital overcrowding is leading to patients being left on hallway stretchers in emergency departments, sometimes for more than a day... Surgeries are getting cancelled and more patients are getting hospital-acquired infections. Residents of some smaller communities have to travel further for health care because their local hospitals have been cut or closed. And outpatient clinics that provided services like physiotherapy have been shuttered."
I'm hopeful that after the upcoming Ontario elections, we'll see a much more concerted effort to put the major responsibility for quality of life squarely on the shoulders of the individual -- along with the requisite tools (such as connected PHRs, EMRs and EHRs), of course!
Martin Wiseman, the World Cancer Research Fund’s medical and scientific adviser suggests in a Toronto Star article on healthier living that:
"The real problem is not coming up with new solutions, the real problem is having the will to implement what we already know."
Before I close, I need to mention that I do value your time and thank you for the effort expended to read this blog; however, should you no longer wish to receive the notification e-mail, please take action as described at the bottom of the latter -- sure I'll be upset, but I'll get over it much more quickly if you promise to at least check out this blog occasionally.
To your good health.
Ernest A. James
President & CEO
Regal Informatics Inc.
Posted as requested by/on behalf of JKB:
ReplyDelete"Hospital overcrowding is leading to patients being left on hallway stretchers in emergency departments, sometimes for more than a day... Surgeries are getting cancelled and more patients are getting hospital-acquired infections"
As a nurse in teaching hospital, let me address the excerpt above. I do believe that there are many reasons for this. Let me divulge 4 that I believe may be relevant.
1.Crowding in ER hallways is not new and nor will it go away any time soon; no matter what any Premier says and promises. They have tried to conjure up nurses before and the magic trick failed miserably. Basicaly, there are no nurses! Many shy away from the profession and tell their children to stay clear. Why? It is no longer a profession that demands the respect it deserves. The respect is neither shown to it from outside the organization nor within its own infrastructure. Case in point: The recent contract accepted and presented to the nurses by ONA (2011) has allowed its front line workers a grand total of 5 sick times. That is, nurses are basically allowed to be ill 5 times for the fiscal year. To be fair,one sick call may last up to 3 days without a doctor's note). These are front line workers who are constantly exposed to contageous diseases but not allowed to be sick. This has an avalance effect, much to the chagrin of the great deciding minds, since now nurses will be coming in to work sick and causing more nosocomial disease to already immune compromized patients. Why? because a single mom having to care for her family now cannot afford to be ill,thanks to ONA and the OHA!
2. Do not fool yourselves, there is not always a shortage of physical beds. There is however a shortage of the nurses to man these beds. Yes, surgeries get cancelled, not because there is no surgeon, but because there is no nurse to care for the patient after the patient gets out and needs care.
3. The ER rooms will continue to be crowded, because silly people and hypocondriacs will come in to clog it, along with the ligitimate ones. User fees? I am in such a quandry over this issue. User fees may just deter legitimate patients without funds from coming in. So many drug seekers will come in at night to the ER thinking that they can dupe the system due to a weary doctor at the helm.
4. Will the hallways be clear? Not any time soon I think, until the health care system realize that their system is an upside down one. One where curative medicine is the order of the day and prevention is put on the back burner. Look at PSA testing for example, that OHIP is now refusing to pay for. Why are we trying to "cure" prostate cancer and not paying to monitor and catch it at an early stage instead? Why are we not preventing obesity in our populus by giving tax breaks to those who have gym memberships or who will buy a bike for exercise sake? Where exactly is our focus here? Our healthcare is truly topsy turvy and is about to topple!
These are just a few of my thoughts on this blog.
Keep healthy!
Judith