Nova Scotia resident Brian MacLean recently had what’s become a typical experience at the hospital. He took his wife to Halifax’s QEII emergency room after she suffered a fall. “We waited probably about an hour and a half in triage. And then they sent her for X-rays and then we were probably there for close to seven hours by the time she saw the emergency room doctor,” says MacLean. He says the doctor sent her for a second set of X-rays, which bumped up their total hospital time to nearly 10 hours. “It’s not a great situation. There’s strains on the system, obviously,” says MacLean. Despite frustration over the wait, he says they chose to stick it out, but a new poll shows half of Canadians are avoiding the hospital altogether. “[It’s] not because they were feeling better, but despite the fact that they had a medical issue, they found that the wait times would be too long and were afraid they would not be able to access health care in a timely manner,” says Renaud Brossard, the vice-president of communications for the Montreal Economic Institute. “What this means essentially, is that, when we talk about the universality of our health system, I think we have been able to protect the universal financial accessibility, but we’ve never really managed to make sure that there is a universal access to timely care.” Dr. Fraser MacKay, a board member with the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, says he often sees people leave after waiting for care. “They’re frustrated, they’re angry and at times they’re apologetic…They will say they think they’re wasting my time because it’s an emergency department. And that’s just not the case. I understand they’re not there because they want to be there. They’re there because they don’t have anywhere else to go,” he says. Despite popular belief, he says staffing isn’t the biggest issue right now. “The problem is I don’t have the capacity to assess those patients because my access to resources, i.e., privacy, a stretcher, a monitor, is being blocked. And that’s because of the outflow problem that we have of the fact that we can’t get patients out of our department to bring the new ones in,” MacKay adds. Some of the survey respondents say they’ve paid for private health care to avoid the wait. “People are understanding that the way the system is run, our health-care monopoly right now is not working. That just tweaking the system a little bit, is not going to be enough,” says Brossard. For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
