U of R Health Care Study Damning, Not Surprising

(Aired on July 12, 2010)

Should it come as any surprise that Kamloops is rated as the health area with the lowest rating in the country? I don't know if I totally agree with the results of a study out today by the University of Regina, but it clearly indicates that health care in B.C. isn't rated very highly.

This study looked at availability of services, level of care and patient satisfaction. I've said for years that we have to totally revamp health care. I think the province has done some things, but most of them seem to have been done to cut costs and not to better health care. If we can change where we put the money to provide better care, all well and good. But that's not the sense I get of what's happening.

I know from personal experience that wait times are very frustrating. I've experienced that, and I can only guess that this kind of thing certainly leads to the patient dissatisfaction mentioned in the survey. But wait times aren't confined to B.C. So there must be other things that were surveyed that didn't pan out well.

Whether you believe the results of the survey or not, there's no question that the health care system is broken, and needs fixing. When surgeries are postponed because you don't have good enough equipment to properly sterilize surgical tools, when you can't get a procedure done because we don't have enough operating rooms functioning, when you can't get to see a specialist and even when you do they can't do anything for you because they don't have operating times, when you hear reports of the hospital being dirty because they don't have enough support staff, when you can't get into the ER because they don't have enough staff to process you, when you can't get care in rural areas because they don't have enough doctors, is it any wonder that we rate so low?

We aren't alone in the province. New West and Burnaby rate just as poorly for larger centers and even places where doctors want to settle, like Abbotsford and Chilliwack, fared poorly. It's a state reflection of our level of care when we're so badly thought of. I'm not confident the government will take notice or even care about the report, but perhaps with some pressure, they can do what needs to be done. And that's conduct a major overhaul.