Friday, March 06, 2009

Fully funding Public Healthcare: The solution to wait times.

Edmonton ER doctors heard today from a British physician who advised Tony Blair's Labour government, about how Britain has drastically reduced medical wait times.

By sacrificing Universality? Selling big chunks of the public system off to the private sector? Letting the rich buy their way to the front of the line at the expense of everyone else?

Nope. By doing what right wingers like to dismissively sneer at as 'throwing money at the problem'.

Dr. Matthew Cooke will talk about the "four-hour rule," whereby patients are either treated and sent home or admitted to a hospital bed within four hours of showing up at an emergency room, 98 per cent of the time.

In order for the change to occur, the country's National Health Service spent £600 million [roughly $1 billion Cdn] to create thousands of beds in nursing homes so that sick elderly patients could be moved out of hospitals, Cooke said Friday on CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.

"If we looked in 2001 in England, there were 7,000 of these people any day in a hospital bed. Now, it's about 1,500," Cooke said.

The change means beds are now available to ER patients that require admission to hospital.

"It was a big investment but the improvements have been obvious from that investment," Cooke said.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

National Health Service is serve the service in the hospitality. The organization also need to provided awareness to drug intervention which resultant people get attention to medical and hospitality which give more popularity to organisation.
Sean Cruz
http://www.drug-intervention.com/do-not-enable.html

Jenn Jilks said...

In Ontario they are trying to improve Home Care, with workers helping seniors stay in their homes longer, with tailored services. Unfortunately, we are short PSWs, s well as nursing staff. In Central Ontario health care workers drive long distances to serve clients. It doesn't pay to get old and sick.

Popular Posts