Healthcare... The Broken System

Do you know where your tax dollars are going?

As Canadian citizens we are told that we have "free healthcare".

I am here to tell you that your dollars that are allocated to healthcare are poorly managed.

I am a nurse with over 20 years of experience. I spent about 1/2 my career in home care services. This is the biggest mismanagement of funds I have ever witnessed. 

Home care services are desperately needed for so many. Nurses are seeing thousands of patients a day in Canada. Most patients are referred to home care for temporary care to rehabilitate. The unfortunate part about this is most of these patients are never rehabilitated. Nurses are put in place as a temporary bandage.

When I entered home care I was amazed at the level of skill it took to be a home care nurse. With prior experience in the hospitals and Long Term Care I was looking for a change. Home care nurses are expected to have all skills with little to no support. When working in the hospital you have many other healthcare workers that you can call upon for assistance or knowledge, this just isn't the case in home care. 

To obtain home care services patients have to qualify with specific qualifications. If patients are fairly ambulatory they are referred to clinics, also owned by home care services but the patients go to the nurses instead.

After a referral is sent to home and community care they send out a request to the home care agencies. So the middle man which is home and community care receive a cut of the dollars allocated to care for this patient. You would be amazed how much money they are given to essentially slide a file over to a home care agency. Now the agency has the file and assign nurses to see the patients. The nurses receive the smallest cut of the funding to complete the care. Many home care agencies pay poorly, but nurses aren't in the business to make money. Nurses are doing the job because they love it. Being a nurse is very much part of our identity. 

Now I am going to speak on some personal experience. 

Most times we are seeing patients that require our services because they are unable to afford proper care of themselves. I have seen many diabetics in the community that are unable to afford proper nutrition or supplies to treat their disease. Doctors refer them to us for diabetic management as their blood sugars are not stable. I come in and we work together on reducing the blood sugars. I go over their diet with them and ask them what they are eating. I can't tell you the amount of people that tell me they eat whatever the food bank or local Dollarama carried. Often times they are overweight and judged. You know, how do you become so obese when you can't afford food? You think about that one for a minute. People are overweight and malnourished did you know there was such a thing? Low income families receive a very small amount of money for food and often times it is required to go towards their housing. (another rant I won't get into today)

As a nurse I can't change what they are eating and I don't believe the patient can either. They take what little they have and go to the Dollar store and fill their carts up with carbs because that fills everyone up for cheap. Often times poverty causes their condition, diabetes is just one of the common ones. We move past the diet and they explain to me they have insulin that is covered, but can't afford to buy the needles. Or they can't take their blood glucose because they can't afford the reader strips. Often times it comes down to food or their treatment. As the nurse I promptly fill them up with what supplies I have and their blood sugars get into range and we come in for a few more visits and things are going fairly well on paper, until they are discharged from services as we are not permitted to keep a patient on service if the treatment was successful. Home and Community care will force the nurses hand if we try to keep them on service, and believe me we try. I had many verbal altercations trying to advocate for patients. So the patient is discharged and more often than not the patient will end up bouncing back and forth from home care services and hospitals as their sugars will not regulate. Thousands of dollars are used to put temporary bandages on patients and push patients out the door when all they really need is money for food and proper access to medical equipment. Unstable blood sugars always lead to other conditions, kidney disease, loss of limbs, chronic wounds, cardiovascular diseases, the list goes on. 

I have used one example in my post today. Thousands of people in Canada where we have "free health care" are suffering. We are pouring millions into Healthcare for substandard care. Why can't the funds be allocated to proactive treatments? It just doesn't make sense to me to be throwing so much money at this broken system. People need proper nutrition, proper housing and better care. Let's treat people with the dignity they all deserve.