No one writes articles criticizing close friends. Who publishes critiques about office associates? We share some responsibility for the behaviour of those around us. For these reasons and many more, the Ontario Medical Association almost never prints meaty criticism about healthcare mismanagement.
But times have changed.
The Wynne Liberals slander and lie about doctors. Notable doctor-bashing bureaucrats now hold prominent positions of power and lash out with impunity. The OMA-MOH relationship is in tatters. Even talk about engagement, a nauseating pretence for partnership, has disappeared.
OMA as Health Critic
Doctors have a rare opportunity to speak frankly about waste and mismanagement. Physicians work around it every day. We apologize for it continually. Most of the time, we own some of the system’s performance. Not anymore.
Doctors of Ontario need to speak up, soon. In a few months, politicians will realize they risk even bigger mistakes in completely ignoring doctors. By then, doctors will be back into some sort of working agreement, and we’ll have lost our chance.
Healthcare Mismanagement
We need to educate voters on the rot inside healthcare. We should share examples. We don’t have to expose our own hospitals. But at least we can talk about global problems.
Let’s avoid asking for more beds, more MRIs, more drugs, etc. Asking for more just empowers government to take more control. We need to show how centralized control created mismanagement in the first place.
For example:
- The ministry of health got public hospitals to spend millions on their own information technology systems but never cared if hospital IT communicated with any other system. This leaves patient records fragmented and in many cases almost useless. Any real business knows its first priority must be to communicate with its business partners, like other hospitals and providers. But hospitals don’t need to worry about pleasing partners like a real business.
- Diagnostic imaging results are not available for many days. Scans get reviewed within hours. But results often drag along days to weeks later with many still arriving by fax.
- Archiving systems for digital images (PACS) are not shared and available to all hospitals in the province only small groups of select hospitals.
- Family doctors make referrals only to find out weeks later that that particular specialist cannot accept any more referrals for months. Other provinces track referrals to consultants so that patients and primary care providers can follow referrals along in the process. Providers know which specialists are accepting new referrals.
- Specialty services have long wait lists or are unavailable in many communities. For example pediatric psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery are notoriously difficult to consult.
- Government massively increased the number of physicians 15 years ago. Now the government refuses to provide an opportunity for trained specialists to work despite long wait lists of patients needing care.
These are just a few examples of healthcare mismanagement that government could have prevented or could fix now.
Politicians dread talking about healthcare. They know it’s impossible to control a complex system from the top down. But they insist on trying anyways. Politicians want nothing more than to keep media distracted, even scandals are better than having to show their ineptitude at healthcare mismanagement.
Government cannot run healthcare all alone. It needs help. It needs doctors intimately involved with managing the system in the best interest of patients. I hope doctors take the opportunity to speak up. Please feel free to share more examples in the comments!
photo credit: thestar.com
