Another Health Care rant...............

So I have a gripe. If you are not in the mood to read about a gripe you just might want to bypass this post and go find a happy place.

Here it is. Health care. I am damn proud of our Canadian health care. It has flaws.....everything has flaws. I accept that. However, I still want to go to Victoria(capital city for our beautiful province) and shake the living bee geebees out of the Minister of health.

It would appear that health care really doesn't exist if you live outside of the Lower Mainland(Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver,Surrey, Richmond, etc), or outside of Victoria. Now I know I have bitched about this before...but today my twizzlers are really in a knot.

Two things....I need to have an ultrasound done on my shoulder. My doctor ordered it back in September....she had her office re-fax the request 10 days ago....I called again today just to see if they even had a date. No date. They are booking into December.....they can't give me a date. There was no point getting mad at the booking clerk, it's not her fault. She told me they get 120 requests a day for ultrasounds.....gosh I didn't think we had that many residents north of Nanaimo that would make up such a list..but apparently we do.

My husband was telling me about overhearing a conversation at the hospital yesterday, the booking clerk was speaking to someone about making an appointment....again she said to them that the earliest they were booking was into December and that if she wanted anything early she should call the hospital in Victoria or even try going to Vancouver. Here is what bothered us about this. As we have no idea as to how old the person was that they were speaking to on the other end of the phone, but we thought, if that was an elderly lady being told she had results of a test and the doctor wanted her to have another test..but that she should book it on her own...how wrong is that....poor thing....she was most probably flustered at the news and then having to comprehend everything else the clerk was telling her. But here's the icing on the cake....the clerk told her that if she did manage to get an appointment either in Victoria or Vancouver to please call her back so she could give her spot to someone else. To me that is just wrong. If the hospital can't provide the service then I think they should be arranging the service for the patient at another facility, don't you?

Here's the other thing. If I was on an insurance claim like Worker's Compensation or ICBC they would have me in there and have the test done so fast your head would spin. You see the longer they have someone on an insurance claim the longer they(the insurance companies) have to pay and of course they don't want that....so for some reason they seem to be able to bump the average person in the line.....not right. Yet, if I look at it from an employer and insurance stand point I can understand that they would want things expedited. You see if they can get the problem diagnosed sooner and treatment started sooner the sooner the person gets back to work....yes it all makes sense. However, Mrs. Smith, or Mr. Jones or Smalltown RN who are patiently waiting there turn in line wait and wait and wait. Now I know from a health care standpoint that if something was urgent it truly does get dealt with relatively quickly.....it's just frustrating.

Here we are in our small communities...begging for a doctor to come to town so we can at least have a doctor....then we have to travel anywhere from 30 - 60 km to get xrays, or ultrasounds done...we have one lab in my town and you can wait sometimes up to two hours just to get blood work drawn. It's all just frustrating.

Sometimes my suspicious mind takes over and I wonder if this is truly a plot that our provincial government has in trying to privatize health care....trying to convince us that it would be better, that we would be seen quicker......I don't think that is the case. We can't even get doctors or services here now. I think it is just a ploy to convince us that privatizing health care is the way to go....and I won't even entertain that thought...that's just wrong.

If the insurance companies want their clients seen quicker then why don't they have clinic of their own.....they pay the government to open the clinic..the government operates the clinic...and only clients that are part of insurance claims can go there.....they then wait their turn just like anyone else and get their treatment.

It's been a real eye opener for me moving out of the Lower Mainland where health care is so readily available.......It's a shame, I didn't realize I had to sacrifice the ability to access health care in order to live a healthier life style.....go figure.....