Globe and Mail (CA): Children’s Hospital may send patients to U.S. by ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
B.C. Children’s Hospital may have to send some of its young patients out of province or to the United States for immediate care if it keeps having to reschedule surgery, the hospital’s surgeon-in-chief says.
“If we have to send the child to Edmonton or Calgary or Toronto or Montreal or wherever, that’s fine,” Dr. Geoffrey Blair said. “But … critical-care nurses are in short supply there, as well, so that could mean that we’d have to send a child to Seattle, to Portland, Ore., to a host of places in the States. … We’re not going to compromise the child’s care just to keep the child here.”
Children’s Hospital has had to postpone 53 operations since April – 14 last week and three on Monday. In 2007-08, there were 49 cancellations, and five the previous year.
The hospital performed almost 8,200 operations in total last year, and does an average of 35 a day.
It’s not a lack of resources, Dr. Blair said, but primarily a lack of nurses. The hospital has 112 critical-care nurses. Dr. Blair would like 25 more – 10 more than the 15 who’ve been recruited and will start at the hospital in the next few months.
The Democrat Party wants to impose this type of system on Americans. You have been warned.
Hat tip to The Anchoress.
Filed under: Everything Else , Canada, socialized heatlh care
Did you read your own post? It is not a lack of money, it’s a lack of nurses. Sometimes the supply of people graduating doesn’t exactly match the current job market.
Yes, I read my own post. Socialized medicine results in major cost cutting due to increased consumption of services. (When a service is perceived as “free,” more of a service is used.) So frankly, it is doubtful that “it is not a lack of money.”
Even IF it is true that money is not a factor, it hardly says anything positive about the health care system when so many people chose to avoid the nursing profession to the point where a shortage results.