Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutt
3 patients die waiting for a bed: EMS
Written by: DON PEAT
Feb. 7, 2008
Hospital backlogs that leave patients in waiting rooms or on stretchers in a so-called "hall of shame" are to blame for three people dying within 24 hours at Etobicoke General Hospital, a city paramedic union leader alleges.
Glenn Fontaine, unit ambulance chairman for Toronto Paramedic Local 416, claims three people died between Monday and Tuesday at the hospital, with one of them going into cardiac arrest after sitting in the waiting room with chest pains for three hours and another patient dying after waiting with paramedics on an "offload delay" before getting a bed
Offload delays refer to paramedics at the hospital with a patient waiting for a bed.
Paramedics call the hospital's back hallway where they routinely wait with patients for an emergency room bed the "hall of shame," Fontaine said.
............
Rest of the story
|
I'm not sure what happened there, and three patients would be extraordinarily sad. But I'm absolutely sure such stories circulate in the US too.
Moreover, such delays have little to do with a country having "socialised" medicine, but rather with how much money is spent on healthcare and probably more importantly, how that money is channelled and how services are organised. Again, I have little knowledge about Canada's GP system. I can very well imagine this particular emergency room was cluttered with people with minor complaints that don't need hospital care.
Here, guidelines command that self-referral to a hospital emergency room is "not done" and patients are (depending on their complaint presentation) first evaluated by GPs, who have their regular practice during business hours and have set up A&E-like posts all over cities in after hours. An exception would be an ambulance presentation, but even those are usually the result of a GP evaluation.
Overall, this filters out around 95% of people who might otherwise present to the ED with a sore throat but who now get adequate care from their GP. This saves tremendous amounts of money and hospital reserves.