Maybe this deserves a new thread, but here is my two cents on how to improve healthcare
-take a harder look at what is covered and what is not on the surgery side. Many surgeries are done by the specialist deciding if they need to be done. This is a pretty clear conflict of interest. Elective orthopedic surgeries are a great example.
-shift doctors workloads in family practice to those issues that need it and use healthcare practitioners whose knowledge its not being used efficiently. Ie primary care facilities, nurse partners,etc. They work very well at reducing backlogs. Unfortunately, the CMA (and therefore AMA, BCMA, etc.) is VERY powerful and has worked hard at skirting the purges of diminishing physicians role in simple primary care.
-Diagnostic procedures should have more stringent guidelines on when they are used.
-Private diagnostic clinics are useful in the provinces that have them (MRI, etc.)
Some other wasteful things I've noticed:
-the use of ondansetron in hospitals is astounding. Gravol works just fine in many nausea cases, but ondansetron is widely used in many hospitals instead because it is more effective in some types of nausea. Gravol is ~$0.02 per pill, ondansetron is ~$8.00 per pill. Hundreds of dollars per day on some hospitals and thousands in some bigger hospitals just in ondansetron.
-antibiotic overuse is rampant. In the Interior Health Authority (the region I work in) alone: 70% of people who were diagnosed with acute bronchitis (bronchitis in a healthy person) received a prescription for antibiotics. Bronchitis is > 99% viral, meaning NONE of those patients should have received antibiotics. For acute sinusitis (sinus infection that is less than 4 weeks in duration, no complicating factors), 65% received antibiotics. Acute sinusitis is bacterial in <2% of patients, therefore antibiotics are NOT recommended. This has a direct cost of millions just in this health authority. Add the indirect cost of people seeking medical help due to allergies and Antibiotic Associated Diarrhea.
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