Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
Canada has a couple of challenges that don't really apply to most European countries, or even the U.S. when it comes to health care. Doctor shortages create long wait times which is the main criticism of our system. And at the risk of angering some people, we lure way too many doctors from countries that have absolutely horrible healthcare which doesn't help improve things here.
There are a lot of places in Canada that doctors just don't want to live in if they can help it, which creates doctors shortages. When you can ply your trade almost anywhere you want to in North America, it's difficult to convince the best ones to stay in or move to Canada. They can make more money and have a more desirable climate to live in just by going to the country next door. When it comes to luring talented doctors, we aren't a the top of the list for the same reason we aren't at the top of the list for luring top NHL free agents.
Criticizing socialized medicine for these failures is like criticizing Winnipeg for having a lousy film industry.
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Sorry for nitpicking, but I don't like the phrase 'doctor shortage' as it misses the issue of wait times for specialists.
The term is appropriate in some situations. There are certainly places that have a shortage of MDs (rural and northern regions in particular, like you mentioned). Those shortages are typically GPs. It would be great to have specialists everywhere too but there's something to be said for centralizing health care in centres of excellence, and geographic distancing from rural regions is the consequence of that centralization. Virtual visits have become more popular especially in the last year
for some reason, so it will be interesting to see how remote health care access can improve moving forwards.
But when dealing with specialists, there is actually an abundance of many types of specialists who are Canadian citizens, Canadian trained, and want to stay in Canada, but cannot find a job. This is especially true for surgeons, such as orthopedic and cardiac surgery. Adding a surgeon to a region costs more than paying for just the billing costs (overhead, administration, salary, etc). You also need physical OR space and staff, recovery ward and staff, and a variety of other costs. That means that instead of getting hired after becoming a surgeon/specialist, there is a 'credentialing inflation', where trained doctors putz around getting more letters after their name. For example in orthopedic surgery, after the undergrad and med school degrees (~4 years each) plus residency (5 years), they need a graduate degree (2-4+ years) plus multiple subspecialty fellowships (2+ years) to even be considered to work in an academic centre.
There are a lot of people out there who need a new hip, and a lot of surgeons living in Canada wanting to replace those hips, but nobody is offering them a job (and all the additional OR time and ward space that comes with it).
With all this said, I am still strongly supportive of the Canadian health act and the spirit of exclusive public health care. There are ways to make it work, and currently I would prefer to be a patient in Canada over the US any day of the week. I just want to clarify that a lack of willing MDs isn't the root issue in many of these discussions.