Alberta Health Care a Scarey Place to Be...........

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You know what I am talking about. Every Tom, Dick and Judy (Harry moved to the USA back in 2000) runs off to the doctor’s office, usually a medical center or a local hospital, because you can’t find a family doctor even if you wanted to in this city, because OMG! They have a cold; flu or little Johnny fell down and scrapped his knee (well he should have been wearing protective gear in the first place)
Our medical system is splitting at the seams and where it is splitting? The same place we all view from guys who wear their pants too low and bend over.

We bog our own system down by going to the doctor’s for things that we can deal with at home, like colds and flu’s. Crazy thing is our society will head off to the doctor for simple things daily. I stubbed my toe... run to the doctor’s... I have allergies... run to the doctor’s...My nose is running ... run to the doctors... My fingers just fell off my hands.... run to the doctor’s... ok well that one is a good reason to run to the doctor’s; I just got carried away for a sec. We all know these people. Some are even in our own family. Some are even our selves. Oh you know who you are don’t act shocked now Mom. We know our medical system is lacking yet we add more and more pressure to it by visiting hospitals and offices over things that they can’t fix.

We older generation, fell off bikes, skinned out knees had chunks of flesh removed due to these falls and others falls. We got mono, chicken pox, ear infection, colds, flu’s, mumps, measles, broken toes, and stepped on nails and not one of our parents rushed us to the doctor, they took care of us themselves, well mine did anyways. They gave me a shot of whiskey and cleaned out my wounds and told me to be careful next time. When I was sick they would make me stay in bed, brought me food and drinks and I was so bored I had nothing better to do than sleep. I got better, we all did. Yet, we as parents our selves will rush our kids off when they have a small cut to the nearest doctor just to make sure it’s cleaned properly. A little dirt in the wound never killed anyone besides any local drug store now carries disinfectants we all can use safely. No need to see a doctor for most things.

Antibiotics are now a joke; I hear them laughing at me whenever I actually need them, egging me on saying sure take me but fat lot of good I am going to do for you. They don’t work with our immune system like they use to. We all received too many of these drugs for flu’s and colds at one point in our lives. Even if you were like me and didn’t get these wonder drugs they still wouldn’t work as well because the disease has gotten smarter and become immune. Instead of staying in bed, sleeping, drinking plenty of fluids and eating chicken soup we ran to the doctor’s and expected them to give us the miracle cure. The Catholic Church hasn’t had a so called miracle in centuries but we expected that by going to the doctors when we have common diseases would have resulted in that miracle cure the moment they write the prescription. Always ending up being disappointed, walking out after a 2-4 hour wait, still sick, only now we are so tired we wish we hadn’t even gone in the first place.

With all the medical cuts back when Ralph Klein was premier (yes, I voted for him... please send hate mail to your trash cans instead of me please, I live with my shame daily) of Alberta, we have never recouped those losses’ since. Even in our, well last year, booming economy they never really recouped what was cut from the medical world. It’s like when I take money out of my savings, I never seem to be able to add it back in and catch up.

Our doctors ran from Alberta, like camels running for water, to the USA. Why did they run, you ask yourself?.... Answer; MONEY... Doctor’s in the USA make more money per patient then doctor’s in Alberta. They have a better chance of paying off their medical school loans in the USA then in working in Canada. I can’t blame them really and neither should you. We train them and the USA benefits from them. The cost schooling, opening your own practice, paying employee wages and so on can make doctor’s in Canada live in poverty. Oh! don’t for one minute think that our doctor’s are rich just cause they have MD behind their names ... maybe that was so in the 80’s, but this is the year 2009 and our doctor’s can barely afford to pay off their medical school loans . I know labours that make more in a year working, and then doctor’s do with their own practices. The kicker is they both can end up working the same amount of hours in a day, but the doctor’s still only pulls in what the government says they are paying them per patient ... There is no real over time compensation for doctor’s, like there is for the construction worker. So they run, and we lose valuable medical care in our province.
I don’t agree with a privatized medical system. I am 110% for a social medical system. We just need to start thinking more.

I learned from reading reports on our provincial health care that: among the provinces, Alberta applies the smallest percentage of provincial gross domestic product to health care spending, and Alberta’s spending on physician services in 2005-2006 per capita is drastically lower than the number of people we have per capita in our province. This means less doctors more patients for the ones we have managed to keep in our province.In the past 3 years only 83 newly graduated physicians opened practices and in those same years Alberta only gained 200 physicians per year. Physicians came to Alberta from other provinces, but nearly as many left. Alberta is one of the few provinces that don’t offer a program with recruitment and retention bonuses.

See chart below for clarification:

Province Provides Based on
Newfoundland Bonuses paid to Geographic Location,Length of
Salaried physicians practice

Prince Edward None N/A
Island

Nova Scotia None N/A

New Brunswick Bonuses and location Geographic location, length

Grants paid to all physicians of practice

Quebec Recruitment Incentives Geographic location, length of
practice, practice type
(hospitals, etc.) Specialty
Type


Ontario Retention incentives Geographic location,
specialty type

Manitoba Retention Fund Length of practice

Saskatchewan Recruitment Geographic location,
length of practice
and retention incentives

Alberta None N/A

British
Columbia Retirement fund matching Geographic location
recruitment and retention
benefits

Northwest
Territories Recruitment Geographic location,
length of practice
and Nunavut and retention benefits

Yukon
Territory Recruitment and Length of practice
retention bonuses



(I stole this from a recent report I read)
Economic pressures already described are making Alberta a less attractive destination to practise. Physicians have told the Alberta Medical Association:
• Staff costs are going up dramatically and we cannot recoup those costs.
• Young doctors cannot afford to come to Calgary and Edmonton.
• Utilities and computerized medical records costs have both increased substantially, causing income to decrease.
• It is very difficult to recruit and retain physicians when there are significantly increased overhead costs and no differential for high-cost locations.


I can clearly see why they do not want to stay in Alberta. No incentive at all. Not even free meals at the hospital they work in. What they need is just that incentive, make them want to stay and give our province their skills.
Keep in mind one big word; Heritage Fund. Could we not use this large amount of money? $14.5 billion, as of the third quarterly report in December 2008 says we have, in laymen terms we should be able to. Ok, so it’s down 2.5 billion from 2007-2008 year end due to global economic turmoil but we still have 14.5 billion. I am sure a few could put their heads together and come up with some incentives to keep doctors in our province. If I can come up with ways to keep my kids off drugs can’t the government come up with ways to keep our physicians in our province.

We need more physicians simply to care for the same number of Albertans living here as well as those coming in to the province because aging patients require more intensive and complicated treatments Baby boomers are on their way folks and they need medical attention. Those “help I have fallen” necklaces just don’t scream compete medical care. What do we do with them once they have fallen if we have no doctors available to treat them.

Our doctors are also aging this means we will lose even more in the coming years if we do not start replacing them now. Alberta has an immediate shortage of more than 1,000 physicians, in five years, that shortage will be increased to 1, 500. This means we need 500 new physicians a year to make sure we replace the aging ones who are getting ready to retire and provide for the baby boomers who are coming of age.
The end result is this people. The next time you are sitting in a medical center and want to complain that the wait is too long, think about how many doctors are actually on staff, think about why the person next to you is there, is there illness greater than your own? Should you even have come to the medical center in the first place over something that you could have dealt with by drinking plenty of fluids, sleeping, and eating better? Think of all those reasons before you come completely unglued at how unfair it is that you should have to wait 1, 2, 3 4, or more hours to see a doctor. Use common sense, going to the doctor’s because you have a fever of 99.5degrees F doesn’t mean you will die wait till it is 102 and your pain medication; Advil, Tylenol, or aspirin is not lowering the fever. Don’t bog the system down because you need a bandage or you self diagnosed your symptoms on the internet and you think you suddenly have the Ebola virus. If you have a family doctor make an appointment and wait till the day comes to visit them don’t rush to the local emergency room cause you can’t possibly wait a week till you get in. Common sense; we all have it. Forgot what it means?

(Copied from Wikipedia)
Common sense (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" (in common) as their common natural understanding.

If you think it is bad in the medical facilities now wait till all those baby boomers start coming of age, you ain’t seen nothing yet friends.


:)