PelhamToday received the following letter to the editor regarding the "stymied" health care system.
In Ontario a patient is expected to present with one problem only to their family physician. There are eleven systems in the human body that work in unison, so one problem often leads into the next, but that fact seems overlooked, and office visits are booked in fifteen-minute intervals for which the physician is paid approximately thirty-five dollars for their time—a one hundred and twenty dollars an hour payday.
Considering I had a filling at the dentist that took ten minutes and cost six hundred dollars, not a big return for the years slugging away at medical school. Do we have a shortage of doctors in Ontario or Canada as a whole? Yes, one in three have no family doctor—small wonder. But it is not all about the payday but also about who can practice and where.
However, the explanation for dealing with only one medical problem at a time is that the physician can not look after more than one thing in that fifteen-minute window safely, if beleaguered with other symptoms and problems. The receptionist always asks why you want the appointment. Would it not be prudent to have double appointments for those who have more than one issue? Can the government not cut that big of a check?
But it is not all about the payday but also about who can practice and where
The wait for a regular appointment at my doctor is six weeks. So, it may take months to get a number of issues dealt with. It is recommended that the patient picks the issue causing them the most difficulty. Hypothetically, pretend I present with gout in my big toe. It hurts like blue blazes, and I can hardly walk, so I put that niggling feeling in my chest on the back burner and will ask about it in the next six weeks, or maybe twelve, as I need a prescription for my insulin renewed (no, it probably won’t take that long. I’d book them on concurrent days perhaps, but those days may be filled, and it could take some time). The chest thing isn’t much, just a flutter now and again. It will have to wait because I am not a rude patient asking for more than my allotment. (In theory, right? I can tend to be rude as they come.)
So, a few days later, I end up in full-blown congestive heart failure and take an ambulance to the hospital for at least a week's stay. In this imaginary scenario, I’ve cost the system a lot more money than a double visit at the doctor’s office and timely treatment would have. The system is ailing and broken. Everyone, call your MP’s office; 911 for the ambulance is far too busy, and the doctor is swamped.
Mary Daurio
Welland
