It’s a teddit link so it’s not contributing to reddit etc.
It getting harder to get timely appointment from recent years development in BC. It went from be able to book family doc in the same week to now about 1 month to 4 months away depending on how popular your doctor is. So with specialist it’s gonna get harder.
We still have to aim higher than simply “it’s free”.
Over here in Montreal my GF and I have been waiting for a family doctor for already 3.5 years (took us just 1 month to get one back in Winnipeg).
The one time we had to go to ER, for a snowboarding head blow with concussion symptoms, we had to wait 13 hours on a quiet night because the night shift had only 1 doctor, in Montreal’s 2nd most central hospital (Notre Dame). In fact, on average 12 percent of all ER visits in the Grand Montreal area end up leaving in frustration without being seen by a doctor.Adding to the ER burden, walk in clinics no longer exist; you gotta use an online appointment finder, and finding an appointment often involves clicking on the search button for over 1 hour, fighting for elusive cancellations with many other people in the same situation.
Many countries have proven socialized healthcare can work very well. Spain, Israel, Italy, Germany among them. We gotta compare ourselves to them, no the US.
My biggest frustration when I moved to Canada was that politicians, media and regular people always compare themselves with the US. You have a better social security system while comparing yourself to a country with almost no safety net. That isn’t something to be proud of.
Well said. The American model is broken and Conservatives want us to emulate them. Socialized healthcare can work as long as it’s funded appropriately.
Some years ago we were able to get a family doctor who had her own little walk-in clinic. The waiting room always had some patients in it, but she would see you within an hour.
Since the pandemic the clinic is mostly empty because she no longer accepts walk-ins and even patients in her roster must get a telephone appointment first before even having the possibility of meeting her in person. And when you have an in-person appointment it only takes a day or two and when you arrive you can see that there are no patients before or after you – she must be seeing very few people per day.
Her case isn’t unique. It is difficult to find walk-in clinics anymore, and family doctors accepting new patients were already unicorns before the pandemic. Why is this happening? What sort of incentives and disincentives in the system turned regular doctors into hermits that do a fraction of the work they used to? Large swaths of the population are not receiving any medical care at all and we are considering to move out of the country.
Note: below is personal conversation with a doctor with no actual policy, budget allocation etc to back up claims.
My family doctor did warn about removing MSP since the first time(cut MSP in half), he said he had problem booking specialist for other patients(their quota are cut). And worry that further cut would affect GP as well. I haven’t see him in person for almost over 2 years cause the booking difficulty.
I post this a while ago on reddit before the blackout and one posted that the budget is not cut after remove MSP. And since we don’t know how the GP quota works, unless a GP doctor is willing to share info it’s all guessing.
Maybe if the US didn’t poach most of our talent 🤷♀️
Can you have Canada’s license/qualification and then just get hired by US hospital/clinics??
[It’s] getting harder to get [a] timely appointment from recent years['] development in BC.
P A N D E M I C
The pandemic is only the largest blow to a system in need of shoring up already.
We should definitely expect issues and delays over and above the norm for years. Improving our system will help, but a global lethal pandemic and the impact on our healthcare system - even if we didn’t have angry indolents not doing the barest of minimal work to limit the effects - needs to be accounted for.
At my local walkin clinic in north Burnaby I can usually book a same day appointment. But you have to be on the ball loading the web page on the morning open, and it can take a couple days. The demand definitely is high.
I know the walk in can be done, but even that also see increase over time. I remember during early covid I can book telephone calls same day, but now if you want to book online/call then it’s ~1 to 2 days. For same day it only works if the clinic doesn’t take advanced booking for walk-ins and you have to get in the queue quickly in the morning. I use medimap quite frequently for myself and it’s already concerning. I need refills every 6 months basically, sometimes the walk-in call only willing to give me 3 months so that’s why I observe gradual increase of time required for booking.
Then when shit hits the fan(my son got a stomach flu ~2 months ago), and you literally hit every door shut in your face(fully booked everywhere). I eventually have to call 811 the nurse line, then they redirect me to some local emergency place that triage like hospital ER, got the doctor to check and teach us how to deal with it.
I can imagine someone with actual emergency but get turned away and miss the treating window and died. I just hope our health care don’t go the way of US, aka pay or you die, approach.
Yeah, walk-ins are not a solution. I’ve been on waitlists for a family doctor about 12 years now, and nothing’s ever popped. I sign up again roughly every two years. :P
Don’t know if this will help but I just got my mother a family doctor near by. So the trick apparently is to just go around your neighborhood (like big enough city area) and see if new clinic pops up. If some new clinic showed up, just pop in and ask if they have family doctor or nurse practitioner that takes patients. (And when I go back to ask if I can transfer myself over the doctor is already not taking. Lol)
My mom was also on the BC wait list for about a year, I think that’s not working as intended.
