Canadian Politics: How to fix public health care

Not sure how many of my fellow Canadians know of this new pilot project but it's a duzey in a very very good way, and surprisingly it came out of Alberta and was funded purely with public money (20 mil cnd). The basic idea is to cut down the amount of setup time in between surguries by creating dedicated centers that only perform one type of surgury, thats it.

www.cbc.ca...
Patients who normally would have waited an average of 47 weeks for an orthopedic consultation were treated in under five weeks.

As well, surgeons worked with a team of nurses and physical therapists to move patients through the system quickly and get high-priority cases done first.

Alberta's Health Department contributed $20 million, mainly for additional staff and operating rooms. The speedier surgeries did not result in other health services being delayed or cancelled.

Now if this starts to spread all across Canada this could revolutionize public healthcare and could get rid of the specter of private hospitols for good. Hopefully

[edit on 15-1-2006 by sardion2000]

This might be a good idea for specific surgeries such as knee and hip replacements but it might not be that great for Cancer surgeries. As long as the surgery is a standardized one, this makes sense. Regardless, it's about time that the Canadian government became more active in solving some of the issues surrounding the health care system.

Originally posted by sardion2000
but it's a duzey in a very very good way,

Is there any other kind?

It's always good to see new projects that attempt to improve the health care system. One of our local hospital contracted out some of their surgeries to private clinics to reduce wait times. The private clinics billed MSP directly and ended up saving the province $113 per surgery on over 1000 procedures.

I like seeing health money spent on patients and not buildings and administration.