Canada's Crumbling Medicare System

[styky]

Canadians in home care, caregivers need more help: report

By Jessica Murphy, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: April 16, 2012 4:19am
OTTAWA --­ When Judy Southon found herself pinching her ailing husband's sedatives, she knew the burden of caring for him had become too heavy.

"I'd give two to him and one to me," she said. "I was taking them too because I was just so stressed - my chest was so tight - I was getting very worried about myself."

Southon's struggles as a family caregiver -­ she helped nurse her husband for two years before getting him into care -­ recurs in homes across the country, according to a report released Monday by the Health Council of Canada.

Home care and its impact both on caregivers and the health system is an emerging issue that's been on the radar for all levels of governments for a few years.

But Council CEO John Abbott said that despite years of research into the home care situation in Canada, this is the first time data from across the country has been crunched.

"We were able to get a really good snapshot of what's happening ­ who's getting the care, who's not getting the care, (and) what it means for the caregivers,' he said.

What researchers found is the current system is stretched too thin and seniors in need of care aren't getting it at the level they need.

"The crisis is not 10 years down the road," Abbott said. "We're talking even today."

Looking at five regions across Canada ­ the Yukon, B.C., Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia - researchers were able to pin down that many home care patients are elderly Canadians coping with chronic condition like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

At least 20% - like Southon's husband ­ suffer from dementia. And a third have complex health problems -­ something that can put a serious burden on their family caregivers.

Home care is in the hands of the provinces, and access to services for patients and family caregivers varies widely across the country. Abbott said for the most part, all governments are doing "poorly."

The report puts forward a number of solutions for governments looking to tackle the issue ­ from boosting resources for family caregivers, to pinpointing practices that are already working here and abroad, and increasing investments in home care instead of long-term care facilities.

"The reality is Canadians want to stay at home as long as they can, and it's the best and cheapest alternative," Abbott said.



Some of the report's key findings:

-In the last decade, the number of people receiving home care in Canada grew

51%

-75% of all home care clients are seniors

-The average per week cost of home care varies by province from $134 to

$189.

-60% of family caregivers are women

-70-75% of all home care is provided by a family member.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/canada/2012 ... 36676.html

[styky]

What kind of a savings is made when hospitals that are fighting drug resistant germs like MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and c-difficile send the clothing out into the neighbourhoods.
This is insanity.


Hospital tells patients to do own laundry
Complex continuing care facility trying to make up $2 million in debt
CBC News
Posted: Apr 17, 2012 6:09 AM ET
Last Updated: Apr 17, 2012 7:47 PM ET
Cost-cutting measures at Saint-Vincent Hospital's complex continuing care unit mean patients could soon be responsible for doing their own laundry.

Officials at Saint-Vincent Hospital, which is part of Bruyère Continuing Care, said instead of using a cleaning service the continuing care unit would be installing coin-operated washers and dryers for patients and their families to use.

The organization said it is $2 million in debt and needs to find savings. They are hoping family members can help the patients do their laundry after a new policy is in place starting in June.

"It's not a perfect world by any means but we feel by trying to save some money in that avenue, it's absolutely not touching them at the front end for their care," said director of complex continuing care Liliane Locke.....................posting.php?mode=reply&f=1&t=73939

[styky]

Hospitals turn to Internet to fight emergency room wait times

Tom Blackwell Apr 17, 2012 – 8:51 PM ET
Patients who log on to the website for Calgary’s hospitals are offered a surprising choice these days: wait times for four emergency departments across the city, posted automatically, 24/7 in “real time.”

A hospital in the Southern Ontario city of Kitchener has just become the first in that province to launch its own, enhanced version of the same idea, amid predictions the consumer-oriented service will soon spread throughout the health-care system. A smartphone app for the Kitchener facility is coming soon.

Administrators argue the online information should help patients better decide where to seek out medical aid, spur staff to improve service — and one day even fuel competition between hospitals under new, demand-based funding models.

“Having our wait times out there, warts and all, is certainly a motivator,” said Don Shilton, president of St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener. “What we’re trying to do is to inform consumers. … Our view is information is power.”

Critics question, however, whether an idea born in the competitive world of American for-profit hospitals will be useful in Canada’s publicly funded system, or might even have unintended, harmful effects.

Emergency physicians stress that treating patients more quickly is an essential goal. But they worry about doctors and nurses cutting corners to speed up the Internet clock, and critically ill patients staying clear of their local hospital because of long queues that might not even apply to them.

“It leads to the commercialization of the care we provide in emergency departments,” said Dr. Peter Toth, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “It’s a marketing strategy, perhaps. I’m not sure how it really adds to the overall quality of the experience.”

The idea of publicly advertising emergency wait times emerged a few years ago in the United States, where some private hospitals display the number on billboards, using the promptness of their service as a marketing tool.

Alberta Health Services, which administers much of the province’s health-care system, introduced its version last July in four Calgary hospitals, as well as two “urgent-care” clinics in the city that are suggested as alternatives. St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener followed suit last week, posting wait times that are updated every 20 minutes, as well as statistics on the number of patients waiting and being treated at any given time. It projects wait times for the next six hours, as well, and lists alternative clinics in the area.

The wait times are calculated electronically by computer algorithms that combine such factors as number of patients and the size of the medical staff on duty. Calgary’s times are for people who fall in the middle of the five-stage illness-severity scale recognized by emergency medicine, meaning some would be seen faster, some less so. Kitchener’s are for those in the three least-severe levels.

For patients not critically ill, the combination of information should make it easier to decide where and when they ought to seek treatment, said Mr. Shilton.

St. Mary’s is already fielding inquiries from other hospitals about its system. Mr. Shilton sees more applications as the idea spreads and Ontario moves to so-called patient-based funding of hospitals, where the province pays hospitals per patient treated, rather than handing over money in annual lump sums.

Better posted wait times could attract more patients, and mean more funding for a hospital, he said.

In Calgary, officials noticed a curious phenomenon after the online wait times were introduced; it appeared patients were moving from urgent-care centres to the emergency departments, said Dr. Grant Innes, chief of emergency medicine for the city.

Earlier reductions in emergency crowding may have made the departments more appealing to patients than clinics, he said. Meanwhile, Dr. Innes said it seems people are still largely choosing the hospital nearest them, not necessarily the one with the shortest wait time.

For the staff working in emergency departments, though, the online postings could have unwanted effects, pushing them to give short shrift to some patients to improve the numbers and satisfy superiors, said Dr. Brian Goldman, a Toronto emergency physician and host of the CBC-Radio show White Coat, Black Art.

He also worries about patients choosing the hospital that posts the shortest wait times, potentially meaning a longer trip that could prove fatal for someone suffering a heart attack.

“We’re the safety net for the health-care system,” said Dr. Toth. “The last thing we would want is people making a decision not to present to the emergency department because of fears of long waits.”

Dr. Innes said that concern seems unfounded, while he does not believe any staff would take shortcuts to speed up service and improve the real-time wait number. If the public alerts add a little pressure, however, that would not be a bad thing, he said.

“I think a much greater danger is that we have sick people having to wait so long in emergency departments,” said the Calgary physician. “I think we need to feel a great deal of pressure to reduce our wait times, in order to improve patient safety.”

National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17 ... ait-times/

[styky]

Abandon hope, all ye who enter health care wait time hell

National Post Apr 19, 2012 – 11:15 AM ET | Last Updated: Apr 19, 2012 11:23 AM ET
Full Comment reader Greg McGinnis sent this comment on “Hospitals should ignore the quibblers in wait times innovations” :

Perhaps it makes me a right-wing nut to complain about this, but let me share my situation:

I broke my shoulder about 3 months ago. I have had to attend the Fracture Clinic at my suburban Toronto hospital – initially every week, then after three weeks, then after six weeks, three months and six months.

1. When I arrive at the hospital, I go to the Fracture Clinic, where I take a number (like at the deli) in order to be seen by the receptionist.

2. After waiting 10 to 20 min., the receptionist then takes my information confirms that I have an appointment. She sends me on to the X-ray department.

3. When I get to the X-ray department, I stand in line to see the receptionist. After waiting 10 to 15 min., I give her the paper that I had received on the previous visit and am told to sit down.

4. I then wait in the waiting room for an indeterminate length of time (usually at least 30 min., but on Monday it was over an hour) until someone comes and calls my name, and leads me to a chair outside one of the X-ray rooms.

5. I then sit in the chair and wait to be called into the X-ray room. This wait time is usually at least 15 min, but on Monday was 30 min. That’s if I am led to the correct X-ray room, which isn’t always the case.

6. The X-ray takes approximately 2 to 3 min.

7. I then go back to the Fracture Clinic, tell the receptionist that I have had the X-ray, and sit down to be called to see the orthopedic surgeon. I usually wait at least 10-15 min.

8. Then my name is called, and I am led by a nurse to a small consultation room, where I sit and wait for the orthopedic surgeon to see me. I usually wait about 5-10 min.

9. The orthopedic surgeon sees me for approximately three minutes.

10. We then rebook for the next time, and I am absurdly given an actual appointment time by the volunteer in the hallway outside the consultation room. I’m not even sure what the reason for giving the appointment times is. They have no relation at all to the time that I’m actually seen.

I am an employed professional. While I am sitting in the waiting rooms (three hours waiting for 5 minutes of treatment), I cannot make phone calls, send e-mails, connect to the Internet, or do anything that might be even remotely productive or enjoyable. On Monday, I was reduced to reading a magazine that was clearly targeted at new mothers.

I can’t even go to the Tim Horton’s in the hospital itself, for fear of losing my place in line and thus extending my wait time. So revenue opportunities for the hospital – and me – are lost. I think the only beneficiary is the hospital parking lot, which needs more space to accommodate all the cars of people waiting inside, and charges a very high price, comparable to downtown Toronto.

If I kept my clients waiting and treated them like the health system treats me, I would quickly have no clients at all and would have a laughingly bad reputation.

Our health system is an example of a monopoly provider that assumes that something must be in the interest of the provider in order to also be in the interest of the consumer, and that change is therefore bad unless it suits the needs of the provider.

I would gladly pay something – perhaps double the cost of the parking fees that I’m spending as a result of the extra waiting — to be given the opportunity to participate in a more efficient and customer-focused system. For those who would prefer not to pay something, let them sit in the waiting rooms for three hours without the ability to make phone calls, e-mails or anything – and pay the parking.

National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... time-hell/

[styky]

Provinces need patient charter of rights: CMAJ

QMI Agency

First posted: Monday, April 23, 2012 04:47 PM EDT | Updated: Monday, April 23, 2012 04:51 PM EDT
Canadian provinces need patient charters of rights to help resolve concerns and complaints, an analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says.

Many countries including New Zealand, Norway, Finland, England and Israel have patient charters, Colleen Flood and Kathryn May of the University of Toronto's faculty of law wrote.

Quebec is the only province or territory with a proper charter, according to the authors. Alberta recently enacted one "but it lacks the critical feature of independent enforcement," a release about the analysis said.

An independent health ombudsman can help resolve patient concerns easily and cost-effectively, they wrote. An ombudsman could also encourage changes to the system by issuing recommendations or reports.

"A patient charter of rights should achieve greater clarity and awareness of the nature and extent of patients' rights; if well-designed, it should also help drive improvements in the quality and timeliness of care, improve the overall accountability of members of the health care system and reduce costly litigation," the authors concluded in the analysis. "However, experience shows that it is easy for a patient charter to be a toothless tiger — that is, a mechanism to merely talk about improving the patient experience and reforming the health-care system."
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/04/23/pr ... ights-cmaj

[styky]

Manitoba MDs warned about limiting patient complaints
CBC News
Posted: May 3, 2012 10:45 AM CT
Last Updated: May 3, 2012 11:31 AM CT
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba says it's concerned that a growing number of doctors are asking patients to book separate appointments for each medical complaint they have.

The college, which governs medical practices in the province, is worried that doctors who limit a patient's complaints during a visit may end up missing important information.

"We don't dictate exactly how a doctor must operate an office, obviously, because they are actually independent practitioners when it comes to business," Dr. Bill Pope, the college's registrar, told CBC News on Thursday.

"But we also tell them that you have to be extremely careful that something that a patient has to tell you doesn't fall between the cracks because you're restricting yourself only to an individual item," he added.

"So we do warn them that they may end up in some difficulties by doing this."

Pope would not comment on a recent complaint that a Selkirk, Man., physician refused to discuss a woman's heart problems unless she booked another appointment.
'One appointment, one problem'

The woman's husband, Bruce Angus, told CBC News earlier this week that his wife, Samantha, had originally gone to the doctor to discuss her back pain........http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ ... limit.html

[styky]

Canadians want feds to assume "leadership role" and fix health care: report


By Mark Kennedy, Postmedia News May 22, 2012 6:02 PM

OTTAWA — Canadians believe the health care system is "overburdened" and they want the federal government to assume a broader "leadership role" to fix the problem, a new report commissioned by the Harper government has found.

Moreover, while many Canadians still believe medicare is "compassionate" and is among the best of the world's health care systems, it is not working effectively and is showing signs of decline that make it "unreliable" and "wasteful".

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/Canadian ... z1ve046mxS

[styky]

Ontario must do right thing for blind tot

By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD, QMI Agency

Last Updated: June 9, 2012 12:00am
Little Liam Reid turns three in a couple of weeks.

There'll be toys and cake, for sure, but his parents, Kristina and Dave, are desperately hoping for a special gift an uncaring health-care bureaucracy has so far denied this tiny tot -- the gift of sight.

Liam has a rare disorder that's causing him to go blind.

Diagnosed just 31/2 months after birth, Liam's had one unsuccessful surgery at the Hospital For Sick Children that resulted in him losing sight in his right eye.

Surgeons at the hospital have told him there's nothing further they can do, so Liam's last hope is for surgery with Dr. Michael Tracy and Beaumont Hospital in Detroit.

Tracy is a world leader in treating persistent fetal vasculature syndrome/Norrie's disease, a condition so rare there are no global statistics on it.

You'd think it would be a no-brainer, in a province that prides itself on its health-care system.

Think again.

Take one small child, add a rare disease that threatens to take his sight. Mix with bumbling bureaucrats who'd rather piddle $1 billion down the drain on eHealth and squander millions at Ornge -- and what do you get?

A heartless, hopeless decision that sent one small, lovely family into the depths of despair.

Kristina and Dave have already spent $45,000 of their own money getting Liam the treatment he needs in Detroit. That treatment restored some of the sight in his left eye. They had to skip an April appointment because they didn't have $5,000 to pay for it.

"We've been told by our Ontario specialists that there's nothing more that can be done locally because Liam's disease is so advanced, so complicated and rare," Kristina told me.

What's infuriating is that there's only one other child in the province with the same condition -- and that child gets treatment in Detroit paid for by OHIP.

The Whitby, Ont., family were at question period Thursday to hear their MPP Christine Elliott ask Health Minister Deb Matthews why their appeal for funding has been turned down flat by the Health Services Review and Appeal Board.

"I think it's only fair that Liam get the same opportunity for sight in Ontario as the other child who's receiving treatment from Dr. Tracy," Elliott told me. She's talked to Matthews and sent her four letters about Liam.

Matthews talked briefly to the parents and promised to meet with them to discuss Liam's plight.She called him a "delightful little boy" after their chat.

But will OHIP fund his treatment?

"I think any reasonable person would understand that the minister can't be making decisions on a one-off basis based on who comes to question period," she told me.

"We have a very robust out-of-country process, but we do restrict out-of-country to cases where we don't have the expertise here," she said.

The more surgeries a doctor performs, the better the outcome. With rare diseases, patients often have to travel to a doctor who performs a large number of surgeries in order to have a successful outcome.

Sick Kids hospital says they can do no more. Do we really have to study this any further?

Here's what Matthews should do: (1) Tell the Reids to take Liam immediately to Detroit for treatment and the province will pay. (2)Reimburse them the $45,000 they've already paid and guarantee to pay cost of future treatment.

Why? Because I vow I'll hound her every day until little Liam gets the treatment he needs.
http://www.lfpress.com/comment/columnis ... 55696.html

[styky]

Why do parents have to become crazy people in order for someone to listen to them. We know our bodies and that of our children. We know when somethings wrong. Don't they teach actual medicine any more


New Zealand woman travels to Canada to give half-sister, 3, part of liver for life-saving operation

Joe O'Connor Jun 11, 2012 – 9:36 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 11, 2012 9:39 AM ET
Allison Lang admits to being a wee bit nervous. But she should be a whole lot nervous. Monday is the biggest day in her 21-year-old life. At precisely 7 a.m. a team of doctors will wheel the native New Zealander into an operating theatre in Edmonton, Alta., for a life-saving operation expected to last 12 hours.

And the life she will be saving is not her own.

Ashlyn Lang is Allison Lang’s half-sister. She is three-and-a-half-years-old, has chubby cheeks, brown hair, an impish smile, a stubbornly brave streak and a diseased liver that has been killing her since the day she was born.

“If you knew there was something you could do to help a family member, whether it be a sibling or some other family member, would you even have to think about it — if you knew you could help them — if you knew you could help save their life?” Ms. Lang says.

“I am just looking forward to seeing Ashlyn get better and become stronger, so I am not too stressed out about my own recovery. This is just something that needs to be done, a step that needs to be taken to help Ashlyn get better.

“Some things you just do. Family is family.”

Even if that family lives halfway around the world.

Corrie is the girls’ father, a firefighter in Kelowna B.C., and, once upon an earlier age, a Canadian jock playing professional softball in New Zealand, where he met a local girl and fell in love. The couple had a baby daughter together; 18 years later Corrie Lang had a second daughter with his Canadian wife, Lisa.

A generation and 12,000 km separates the half-sisters most days, a gap that irrevocably narrowed last week when Allison, a logistician in the New Zealand air force, landed in Edmonton to begin preparing for a surgery where doctors will cut away a piece of her liver and transplant it into Ashlyn.
It is an operation Lisa Lang fought to make happen.

Ashlyn

Photo of Ashlyn Lang, 3, of Kelowna who is getting a new liver courtesy of her half-sister Allison Lang, who came all the way from New Zealand for the procedure that is scheduled for June 11 in Edmonton.

Little Ashlyn was sick from birth. Her palms were red, her belly swollen, her legs dramatically bowed. Doctors in Kelowna assured her mother that there was nothing to worry about. There was an explanation for everything. The red hands were “baby skin,” her belly a “baby belly” and the bowed-legs a genetic hand-me-down from her Dad the firefighter.

“Every time I would ask the doctor about something the answer was always, ‘It is nothing,’” Lisa Lang says.

“It was so frustrating. Sometimes I wondered if everything was just in my head. But then last October Ashlyn got quite sick with bronchitis. She was on medication for 10 days. Then she got the croup, had ear infections, thrush and couldn’t breathe.

“She was in pain. Nobody was listening and I just said this is enough.”

She took Ashlyn to the emergency room at the Kelowna hospital where she sat for six hours, refusing to leave, waiting for a pediatrician long after the doctor on-call said her daughter was merely constipated and to go home. An ultrasound was ordered, blood tests done. The preliminary diagnosis: leukemia.

Specialists in Vancouver later pinpointed the little girl’s actual problem to her liver. Ashlyn was suffering from Tyrosinemia Type 1 disease, a rare disorder that prevents her liver from absorbing protein. Her bow legs were not genetic. Her body was starving itself to death, her bones breaking down, her liver shot to bits with cirrhosis.

“If anybody had just listened to me and done an X-ray they would have seen it,” Lisa Lang says. “The best thing I did was basically become a crazy person at the hospital.”

Ashlyn’s surgery is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Her recovery is expected to take three to six months. Her prognosis is optimistic. The half-sisters separated by half-a-world spent the weekend hanging out in Edmonton. On Sunday they were in a hotel room, Ashlyn merrily chirping away in her sing song voice — Allison learning everything a 21-year-old air force logistician would ever need to know about Dora the Explorer.

“Allison is an amazing kid,” Lisa Lang says. There was no hesitation. Nothing. What she is doing is wonderful. I don’t know how to tell her how much it means to us. She is giving us a beautiful, beautiful gift.”

National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/11 ... operation/

[styky]

1 in 12 patients back in hospital 30 days after discharge
http://www.thespec.com/news/article/743 ... -discharge

New research shows that 1 in 12 patients are back in an inpatient bed within 30 days of being discharged from hospital.

It is not where they want to be after being declared well by a doctor, but new research shows that 1 in 12 patients are back in an inpatient bed within 30 days of being discharged from hospital.

More than 180,000 Canadians were readmitted to hospital in 2010 for unplanned reasons, including surgical wound infection, serious pain and heart failure, according to an in-depth analysis by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

The report also found that about nine per cent of discharged patients were back in an emergency department within a week.

Kathleen Morris, director of health system analysis and emerging issues at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), said unplanned readmissions cost the health system an estimated $1.8 billion over an 11-month period.

“That is such a big number that even if a small percentage of those could be avoided, it would be better care for patients and reduce costs for the healthcare system,” she said.

While not all readmissions can be prevented, hospitals are working on ways to reduce the number of patients who return for further care, including infection control strategies and patient education.

According to CIHI, previous research suggests between 9 and 59 per cent of readmissions are avoidable.

This new report, which examined data from 2.1 million Canadian hospitalizations, found readmission rates varied little among provinces, all hovering between 8 and 10 per cent.

“That underlines this is an important issue right across the country,” Morris said, noting the goal of the report was to identify factors that influence readmissions and better understand the type of patient most likely to return to hospital.

To help answer those questions, researchers looked at surgical patients, pediatric patients, women receiving obstetrical care and those admitted to hospital for medical reasons, such as heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

They found, among other things:

• Infections following surgery caused about 1 in 10 patients — or 9.3 per cent — of surgical patients to return to hospital. That translates into more than 4,000 patients.

• Pediatric patients and those admitted to hospital for medical reasons were likely to be readmitted for the same or similar condition. Surgical patients, on the other hand, were likely to return for unplanned causes.

• Those who live in neighbourhoods with the lowest average income are about 10 per cent more likely to return to an emergency department than those who live in the wealthiest neighbourhoods.

• Rates of patients returning to an ER were 50 per cent higher for those who live in rural areas compared to those who live in larger communities.

Morris said part of the reason for that “dramatic statistic” is connected to the range of services available in rural areas.

The data in the report represent a starting point to see whether strategies that can reduce readmission rates are working in various regions across Canada. Ontario, for example, in 2009 instituted public reporting of two patient safety indicators — hand hygiene compliance and surgical site infection prevention.

Morris said it is too early to tell whether such initiatives are driving down rates.

Dr. Irfan Dhalla, a physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital who reviewed CIHI’s research before publication, said he was surprised by some of the findings, including data showing that small hospitals had higher readmission rates.

“Most small communities want to have their own hospital, but some communities may not be large enough to support a high-quality hospital,” Dhalla said in an email.

For him, another interesting finding is that “hospitals that are discharging patients more quickly than average have more readmissions than average.

“We are under a lot of pressure to get patients out of hospital quickly, and the new report from CIHI suggests that we may be discharging some patients too soon,” he said.

[styky]

Wait times on the rise in Canadian hospitals

Jonathon Rivait Jun 20, 2012 – 3:17 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 20, 2012 3:21 AM ET
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/20 ... hospitals/

[styky]

For heavens sake ask them in North Dakota While traveling through ND we've see this same kind of bus set up for more than 20 years.


Wheels on Manitoba's health-care bus have yet to go round and round

By: Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press

Posted: 4:10 PM | Comments: 0 (including replies)


WINNIPEG - The Manitoba government is facing more delays in fulfilling a promise to have a health-care bus visit remote communities.

The government announced in 2010 that it would have a bus on the road the following year to bring basic diagnostic services and advice to outlying areas. The idea is to make it easier for people to access blood-sugar tests, X-rays, and other services without having to travel to a city or larger town.

The province soon ran into logistical problems, however, such as finding the right way to put X-ray machines and other equipment into a limited, mobile space.

By the end of last year, Health Minister Theresa Oswald had pushed the deadline back to the first half of this year.

Now, a top Health department official says the new target date is sometime in 2013.

Barbara Wasilewski, executive director of primary care, says extensive design consultations are ongoing to ensure the bus will be safe for patients.

"For example, the door has been moved to accommodate wheelchair access and to reduce chilling of the waiting area," Wasilewski said in a written statement.

Special shielding is needed to protect people from X-rays on the bus, she added, and additional power sources are needed to run all the equipment.

There will also be some sort of warning system to alert staff in the event power is lost while the vehicle is parked and staff are elsewhere.

"This is critical when staff are staying overnight in a community, as equipment and substances require a narrow temperature range to avoid damage," Wasilewski wrote.

Other provinces have already put such buses on the road, but Manitoba's will be bigger and be equipped to provide more services.

The delay appears to have developed recently. Provincial budgets documents tabled in the legislature in May said there would be "operationalization of ... two primary care health buses" this fiscal year, which ends next March.

It's not clear how much the buses will cost. Funding for the project is part of $6.5 million being set aside for health-care innovations this year. The amount also covers five quick-care clinics being established to ease congestion in hospital emergency rooms, and several other projects.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-a ... 28905.html

[RadicallyLiberal]

My family has been lucky not to have had to use hospitals for anything more serious than me losing consciousness due to severe asthma attacks a decade ago. That is, until these past three months. My Dad was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer in February and seems to now be free of it. To see how a 73 year old is treated by his great doctors was the only bright spot, I have so much anger for the rest of the health non-care system.

We were living in a town of 400 and the nurse practitioner in the next town refused to take his symptoms seriously for two years. I knew that my Dad who never complained in my 40 previous years of life was going downhill in a hurry. The only time in my life he used a doctor was a hernia in the early 1980s. Two years after having tried to get answers he finally was ALLOWED by the system to see a real doctor. Who promptly did specialist referrals, the G.P. implied she felt something wrong in the colon just by touch. (The surgeon said this was an exceptional skill and find)

My Dad was badly served by diagnostic availability in Nova Scotia despite a fairly new Hospital nearby in Amherst, built with substantial community donations, but he had to be driven to Moncton, New Brunswick several times for tests.

Luckily when surgery happened another boneheaded Nova Scotia move (mandatory retirement) helped my Dad. His 70 year old top notch surgeon was only working in our local hospital due to his being forcibly retired by a prominent Halifax hospital.

As if my libertarian outlook on government health care needed to be reinforced?

In the end we are lucky, his surgeon is 95% sure that he shouldn't have a reoccurence of this form of cancer in the next decade.

[styky]

My family has been lucky not to have had to use hospitals for anything more serious than me losing consciousness due to severe asthma attacks a decade ago. That is, until these past three months. My Dad was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer in February and seems to now be free of it. To see how a 73 year old is treated by his great doctors was the only bright spot, I have so much anger for the rest of the health non-care system.

We were living in a town of 400 and the nurse practitioner in the next town refused to take his symptoms seriously for two years. I knew that my Dad who never complained in my 40 previous years of life was going downhill in a hurry. The only time in my life he used a doctor was a hernia in the early 1980s. Two years after having tried to get answers he finally was ALLOWED by the system to see a real doctor. Who promptly did specialist referrals, the G.P. implied she felt something wrong in the colon just by touch. (The surgeon said this was an exceptional skill and find)

My Dad was badly served by diagnostic availability in Nova Scotia despite a fairly new Hospital nearby in Amherst, built with substantial community donations, but he had to be driven to Moncton, New Brunswick several times for tests.

Luckily when surgery happened another boneheaded Nova Scotia move (mandatory retirement) helped my Dad. His 70 year old top notch surgeon was only working in our local hospital due to his being forcibly retired by a prominent Halifax hospital.

As if my libertarian outlook on government health care needed to be reinforced?

In the end we are lucky, his surgeon is 95% sure that he shouldn't have a reoccurence of this form of cancer in the next decade.

If you've been to my thread following our saga then you know I know all to well of what you speak. It's been my observation that the doctors in most cases are worth their weight in gold but frustrated by the system. The health care professionals as in nurses and other staff should be given a good slap up side the head and told in no uncertain terms that if they are so bloody unhappy to find another profession and stop inflicting their bad habits on the rest of us.

[RadicallyLiberal]

Wow I just read a few of the first and last pages of your thread, Styky. We got off lucky, with surgery and a great prognosis.

We moved to town earlier this month to have access to real doctors, not discount rate nurse practioners. I am sure people are dying due to the diminished training of nurse practioners.