A Trip into Socialized Medical Care

If you are not from Canada, stop reading now, this is going to be really boring and has nothing to do with Venture Capital.

Last week, my left leg decided to do her best imitation of a tree trunk.  Big, fat, tree trunk.   Because I have been flying all over North America by the ton, had a fever and generally felt crappy, I got an appointment with my doctor.  Normally, this guy is unflappable. Nothing is a big deal to him.  He took one look at my leg, eyes bulged out of his head, and uttered two words: Hospital now.

So, off I go to Southlake Hospital in Newmarket.  Having gotten my attention with what happens when a blood clots leaves your leg and heads up into your chest, I found myself in the emergency room.  They have a deli counter type numbering thing going on.  You grab a number and a trauma nurse will call out "Number 22!".  You then make your way in front of a giant sneeze shield while the nice lady says "any shortness of breath, coughing, vomiting or diarrhea?"  This is, of course, done over the loudspeaker and everybody looks up and waits for your response.  I said, uh, no and she promptly motions me to then come behind the sneeze shield where she proceeds to do the normal, BP, Temp, Pulse.

She asks me what's the problem and before I get a chance to say anything, she glances down at my leg, goes, yowsa that's bad and moves into action.

Now, keep in mind, there are about 40 people in the ER, all with various issues.  She immediately zips me into a room, they start some drugs, have a Doctor take a fast look and send me upstairs to get an Ultrasound on my leg to see if there really is a blood clot in there.  All of this takes place within 20 minutes.

Once it is determined no blood clot just a nasty infection, I drop back into the not going to immediately die category and I spend the next 5 hours waiting to get all finished up with these folks.

Here are some observations about the health system as it applied to me.

- Swipe your health card. That's it.  They didn't want a credit card, didn't want my private health insurance card, etc.  Just make sure you are in the system and you are off.  It was in stark contrast to the Visa/Mastercard signage in most U.S. Hospitals.  I'm not knocking the American system, I'm just saying that there is something, dunno, normal/calming about flashing your health card and getting the systems thrown at you.

- State of the Art saves time and money. Everything was state of the art. Automate BP gizmo, checking of fever, bar codes/rfid, etc.  This sped up the process and clearly was cheaper from a paperwork/time perspective.  It proved to me that we need to think of things like hospital budgets as an investment in the future with a real payback.

- If it is serious, they move.  The province of Ontario, where I live, takes a lot of grief over the health care system being strained, having really long wait times, etc.  I can only tell you that when it appeared I could be in serious trouble, they 'made a path' for me and I was immediately diagnosed and dealt with on a priority basis until it was no longer a serious health threat.  I then dropped into the queue.  It was a, net, very long experience but I truly felt like I was being taken care of by professionals that scaled the services to the immediate/imminent nature of my health.   It isn't perfect, for sure, but I really felt good about the care.

- People cared.  For the nut house that is a hospital emergency room, people cared.  One look at my face, even a three year old knew I was seriously worried (aka scared shitakeless).  People went out of their way to be nice, keep me informed, check on me, apologize for the wait, etc.

- The stuff does interfere.  After reading about the iPods causing pacemakers to go nutty, I decided to check out how good/bad the blackberry was with hospital equipment.  After the lab tech got done checking my leg, I asked her if I could turn on my blackberry to see if it would interfere with the ultrasound device.  Immediately after turning it on, the machine promptly announced I was having a baby boy.  So folks, keep those electronic devices off in hospitals.

So, there you have it.  The Canadian Health Care System.  For me, it worked and the people were amazing.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Comments

[Marc Bernard]

It's a refreshing change to read about a positive experience in the Canadian health care system, even though I'm sure it happens much more frequently than we're led to believe.

Marc

[Karen in TO]

And last week was Nursing Week. Congrats on your minor ailment, Rick. Happy to hear a good-news story come out of Ontario's hospitals. We so often hear the bad.

[Michael]

Rick, sorry to hear about the scare. Get well soon and take care of yourself.

[SSK]

I'm glad that you liked our socialized health care! Would you know how our socialized fire-departments, socialized police-departments, socialized highways etc. compare with their US counterparts?

[howard Lindzon]

glad to hear you are ok.