Who decides care? Governance, funding, and the failures in Canadian health care
“Balls to the Wall.” A younger friend from New Zealand taught me this phrase, which has the same meaning as truth to power. Although some may find it rather rude, I think it suits the topic of this blog.
I recently had occasion to go to the emergency department at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa. I was pleasantly surprised to be taken almost immediately and had an x-ray taken within half an hour and then waited 10 hours to see a doctor and subsequently diagnosed with pneumonia. There was only one emergency physician on duty and when I told him I was going to write to the Board of the hospital, he informed me that the province determined the staffing requirements of the hospital.
As a researcher in governance, carbonneutrality.ca, I was both surprised and shocked by this fact. It was inhumane to have only one doctor dealing with night-time emergencies, both for the people waiting and for the doctor himself to keep up with the demands. Hospital staffing levels should be determined by the professionals and staff of the hospital based on monthly data of people entering the emergency departments. This is a case of unnecessary oversight that is counterproductive to the hospitals embedded in communities and not meeting the needs of their members.
I then wrote to my MPP to ask her to investigate this matter and learned another surprising fact. The province of Ontario has the lowest per capita hospital spending in Canada, and nearly half of hospitals are running deficits due to chronic underfunding. People blame the hospitals and the medical system and yet we don’t have a system, rather politicians controlling critical health funding. Let’s change this pathological decision-making that is affecting the health of Canadians across the country and put in place a health care system funding that is decided by professionals working on the front line.
There is critical information and literacy needed around governance and how decisions are being made – or not made – that the Canadian public need to know.
Our Glowing Hearts: A Toronto-based initiative of LED neon heart lights, originally created during the pandemic, to show support for frontline workers. (Image credit: Richard Burlton from Unsplash)