Dennis Scott’s saga began in February of 2003 when his family doctor found antigens consistant with prostate cancer. He didn’t receive a biopsy until the next September.
CBC
A Saskatchewan family says waiting for health care has been devastating. Tracy Grube was at the legislature Monday morning to talk about her father’s battle with cancer.
She says her dad had to wait seven months for a biopsy to diagnose his prostate cancer. Once the test results came back, Grube says the cancer was found to have spread and was considered incurable.
That wasn’t the end of Dennis Scott’s ordeal. He requires surgery to ease his discomfort. Last week he was on a hospital gurney, prepared for the surgery, when he was told to get up and put his clothes on. There were no recovery beds. It was the third time the surgery has been cancelled.
Apparently, we have an council established to monitor these incidents.
“We don’t know if this is an isolated incident, or something that’s happening repeatedly,” Quality Council chair Dr. Ben Chan said upon hearing about the incident. The Health Quality Council was set up and began monitoring the performance of Saskatchewan’s health system last summer. Chan doesn’t know how common it is to wait seven months for a biopsy, but finding out is definitely a priority. “If we’re going to manage the system better, we really need to have good quality information about just how many people are in that type of a situation,” he said.
This is the so-called Health Quality Council chairman, and he doesn’t know “how common” this is? He’s lacking good quality information? What exactly does this man do for his paycheck?
Without that information Chan said that it is hard to tell where the system may be breaking down and how to fix it. “If somebody has an urgent problem, are they going to the doctor that has the shortest waiting list, or do we know which doctor has the shortest waiting list?” Chan won’t speculate on when the council may have answers, but says if it’s any consolation, Saskatchewan is probably further ahead in this work than many other parts of the country.
Well, no Dr. Chan, it isn’t any consolation. Where the hell were his doctors? Didn’t they read his medical records? The hospital JANITOR could tell you that 7 months for a cancer biopsy is too long to wait. Why do we need an entire beaurocracy on the tax payroll to tell us what we already know and more to the point –why the fuck haven’t the whole lot of you been fired?
More – A good post at Trudeaupia about the effect of socialized health care on doctors.
