is successful in other countries; and they like to point to Canada.
For cancer patients, the study found that the median wait time for radiation therapy was almost seven weeks, exceeding the benchmark of four weeks.
...
Patients are also facing long delays when they go the emergency department, the WTA said, waiting an average of nine hours to be seen and treated and for patients who needed to be admitted, the average wait time was nearly 24 hours.
That is fairly bloody awful. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, time is critical in most cases; the longer it takes to get you started on therapy, the lower your chance of survival. And an average of nearly a full day to be admitted from the emergency room? Damn.
Like the man says, and people say OUR system is broken?
4 comments:
Incredible,
My wife works at the local county hospital (non-profit) and our insurance is through the hospital.
Last month, I experienced what I thought was pain from kidney stones.
I arrived at the E.R at 5:30 pm. By 7:00 p.m. I had been triaged, blood work done and a CAT scan.
By 7:45 p.m. I had a surgical consult informing that I needed an emergency appendectomy. I was admitted to a room at 9:00 p.m.
I was out of surgery and back to my room at 4:00 a.m. Less then 12 hours after I got to the hospital with most of the delay due to me snacking in the E.R.
And this is a county ran, non-profit hospital.
I can't imagine the staffing and problems that can cause such a delay as you show in a socialized national system.
If Canada or England is the role model, I'll pass on socialized medicine
I work at a large hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Our Emergency Department experiences frequent delays in seeing less emergent patients. There are usually bed availability problems for patients that need to be admitted caused by actual bed shortages to staffing issues.
Our system has problems, no question; and I understand things get busy, non-emergency takes second place. Which still, compared to what I keep seeing from Britain and Canada, is pretty good.
The only reason the Canadian system comes close to working is because patients there have the over-the-border-option as a fallback position.
I was listening to a program yesterday regarding a nursing shortage issue. Some nurse supervisor in Miami was talking about having to upstaff every winter to take care of the Canadian snowbirds that come down every winter. Apparently a lot of them schedule medical proceedures there while they are on an extended vacation.
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