CMA survey suggests decline in quality of health care

CBC News

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Sep 26, 2006
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Canadians reported a decline in the quality of health care they're receiving, finds a Canadian Medical Association survey released Monday, though regional pockets of satisfaction do exist.
According to the CMA's seventh annual national report card on health care, which surveyed 1,001 Canadian adults on their views about Canada's health-care system, 62 per cent of Canadians grade the overall quality of health-care services available to them and their families as an A (21 per cent) or B (41 per cent), a decrease from 67 per cent in 2006.
The most-satisfied respondents were in the Atlantic provinces, where 35 per cent graded the overall quality of health-care services as an A.
Overall, the prognosis isn't very positive, the report finds. The proportion of Canadians surveyed who believe health-care services will either get much or somewhat better in the next two to three years has declined to 49 per cent — a sharp drop from 56 per cent in 2006.
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How do you rate the health care services you receive?




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YoungJoonKim

Electoral Member
Aug 19, 2007
690
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OH NO WHAT DO WE DO?
S...SHOULD WE BE LIKE AMERICANS?
OH HEAVENS YES!!!
- sarcasm -
How do you rate the health care services you receive?

In my town?
At my standard, not more or less.
I don't expect town with such small population to have amazing hospital but hey
We have em :p
 

TenPenny

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 9, 2004
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Location, Location
Doesn't surprise me, because most of the people I know who work in the health care field believe the same.

Partly because more and more time is taken up with paperwork, forms, and justifying every single thing. Have a patient in hospital who is staying longer than the 'benchmark average' for that illness? Fill out this form, please, explaining why you can't discharge her.

Mind you, those who work in the field in the US say MORE time is wasted on that crap in the US system.

I put it down to too many people taking management courses, thinking that every facet of our lives can be 'benchmarked' and 'outcomes measured' and 'results driven' and the dilbert catchphrase of the month.
 

tracy

House Member
Nov 10, 2005
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Plus a lot of these surveys are meaningless anyways. You are often surveying people who haven't even had to use the medical system. It's just about their opinions, it has nothing to do with the performance of the system at all. If PR mattered most, I might care.

It's the same thing down here. Admin is always concerned about these stupid Press Ganey scores. It's basically a patient satisfaction survey and we need the scores to be high, we need the scores to be high, we need the scores to be high. Things that were complained about under the nursing category: food wasn't very good and the floors weren't clean enough. It doesn't matter that neither of these things have anything to do with the nursing department...
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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Depending on one's perspective I suppose, we shouldn't really be all that surprised. Before the infection of the merchantile ideology of the United States there was a little ditty called the Hippocratic Oath that physicians pledged. After the touch of the "anything for profit" of America, the postmodern physicians practice became a "business" much more than it has anything to do with the idea that caring for the ill and treating disease and injury was a noble endeavour.

In London Ontario, doctors have formed investment groups and purchased entire buildings to set up private practices and "urgent care clinics"... They've become businesses with the attitude that the profitability of the practice is far more important than the level of care. Concommitant with the emergence of "medicine-for-profit" attitude is the necessity to erect an enormous superstructure of administration and "red-tape". If you're going to run a "business" then you have to act like a business...

Walk-in clinics and "urgent care clinics" are the assembly-line mentality brought to the medical profession and practice.

Governments influenced to govern not on the basis of stewardship and responsibility to the people but rather jumping on the "profitability bandwagon" of "Corporate "World" are prepared to let national trade agreements be broken and theft to be as common as election promises....

The costs of university and specialized equipment instead of being targetted by governments to ease the daunting burden of education and plant/facility costs, have been victim to the all mighty dollar.

The wealthy continue to be able to afford to send their children to university and regard it all as only fair and reasonable that the graduating physicians re-coup the horrendous costs for this privilege from the sick the injured and the elderly. It's business and our world is given over completely to the notion that dollars come first and people come second.