Problem Community Submissions Proposals Progress towards a Solution References
Hunt Club residents include a large number of professional care givers. These doctors, nurses, and other health professionals live in Hunt Club but have their offices and go to work elsewhere in the city. For example, should you require care - even if you live right beside a doctor - in order to be his/her patient, you still need to drive to his office, which could be in Barrhaven.
In addition, there are conceivably any number of people of all ages who require various levels of care: from people with definable diseases and problems to those simply with medical or personal questions who would benefit from contact with a medical care professional at the appropriate level of expertise.
Before our current health system provides care, you must be aware of and fit your needs into one of a set of predefined pigeon holes. You feel you must reach a certain level of need before going to the effort of contacting a doctor. You must go to a doctor. You must usually become that doctor's patient. You cannot reach a specialist unless you go through a doctor. Any type of medical treatment or diagnosis, such as an X-ray, medication, other care item or provision, must usually go through a doctor. You must wait in line for treatment. Almost inevitably you must travel to a destination healthcare location by car or public transport, which tends to exclude those who are less mobile (those who don't drive, for example). Although medical and personal care help can be available through the telephone and Internet, many people (for example, newcomers to our culture, or those that for some other reason may find it difficult to communicate) are not that adept at, or have not been educated to effectively use, such mechanisms.
Also, the energy of most medical/care appointments and providers are focussed on addressing a defined medical problem and the structure of their work limits their ability to get to know their patients and delve deeply into root causes and possible non-medical more-common-sense-based solutions. Professionals are only available at defined times during the day and week. Our healthcare system compensates health professionals (pays them) based on predefined actions that must be individually billed and must fit into the schema of the health plan for the province. Therefore there is a lot of paperwork that a health care professional must do in order to justify getting paid, which reduces that person's effectiveness as a health provider.
The goal of an effective care system is to be just that: provide care easily 24/7 at all levels to everyone.
We need to:One health care model implemented successfully in Vancouver and elsewhere was to determine the cost to government health care programs of caring for people with specific needs (for example, HIV) per year. Then allowing a local community care facility take over all the health needs of such individuals 24/7, and paying the health care facility a lump sum per year per individual "patient". Not having to do paperwork on a case-by-case basis greatly increases the ability of local health care providers to be more effective, and the result could be a reduced cost in dollars and lives to all in the community.
| Date | Progress |
| 3 March 2007 | Put this need onto the Internet. |