Medical care has been of utmost importance recently, especially during the Covid19 pandemic that has hit this industry quite hard. The quality and speed of necessary healthcare services are more critical now than ever.
However, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, there are still issues within the healthcare industry in Canada. This list breaks down 8 prevalent issues regarding health care in Canada.
1. High Cost of Medical Services
- Over the past few years, the population’s increased healthcare spending.
- This is due to the increasing healthcare insurance costs and healthcare services as the years progress.
- Still, the number of people needing medical attention will find it harder to achieve such care due to limited resources to spend on healthcare services for their illnesses.
- These increasing costs impact the universal, publicly funded healthcare system, which can be an additional issue.
2. Aging Population
- Fewer individuals are replacing those in the older generation, as the fertility rate of Canada was 1.5 in 2018.
- The decrease in new infants leads to an increasing ratio of older people over 50+ years old.
- These individuals account for a lot of healthcare service expenditures within the country. As the fertility rate continues to drop, the number of people in the age group will keep increasing as the year’s progress. Therefore, an increasing number of people will require health care services due to age complications that arise as more and more of the country’s population gets older.
- This will later lead to an issue of fewer young people being available to take care of the older population later on.
3. Increasing Chronic Illnesses
- Related to point #2 is the increasing rate of people developing severe or chronic diseases. The declining overall health of the population is related to factors such as obesity and age-related diseases.
- As more and more people fall on the older side, more of them will develop chronic diseases due to their age group being more likely to develop serious conditions such as diabetes, heart problems, and dementia.
4. Long Waiting Times
- As the years go by, more people in Canada need medical attention due to an increasing number of unhealthy people and an aging population.
- This causes a growing number of people needing medical attention and health care services quite quickly in the country, causing waiting periods between receiving medical attention to become longer with each passing year.
5. Lack of Hospitals
- Over the years, the number of healthcare workers has not increased much. Fewer people are available to care for the increasing number of people needing medical attention.
- This also is the same for the number of hospitals within the country. As the number of patients increases, more hospitals become overcrowded, with patients being admitted faster than being cleared out from the hospitals.
- This shows an evident hospital shortage since the number of hospitals has decreased in the past 20 years. This is a troubling problem in the country as the number of patients grows each year.
6. Lack of Medical Staff For Each Person
- Due to an aging population within the country, more and more patients need medical care. It is growing faster than the younger population can be available to care for the increasing number of patients.
- This puts into light a problem of a lack of medical staff to accommodate each new patient, made from more and more people approaching the older age groups and developing more illnesses that need professional medical help.
7. Poor Coordination Between Primary Care Physicians and Consultants
- Within the medical staff in hospitals lies issues with communication. The way primary care physicians and consultants communicate is not as effective as between the two parties.
- The consultants or the most senior doctors should communicate with their subsidiaries with the most clarity and understanding of the situation to delegate what to do.
- Recently there have been reports of this event happening (that is rooted in poor coordination) by the patients receiving this healthcare from those particular physicians and consultants from a survey back in 2011.
8. Private Health Insurance For Long-Term Care Is Limited
- Canada has had public healthcare insurance for their people for quite some time. It has benefited the country so much that many people can access healthcare whenever needed.
- However, not the same can be said about long-term healthcare in the country. Long-term healthcare spans the many hours needed by people with serious illnesses to be assessed and taken care of by medical professionals, mainly nurses and doctors, being at their side for many hours at a time.
Conclusion
Canada still has quite a few issues regarding medical care and healthcare services and quality inside the country today. Some of those issues boil down to the cost of receiving care when needed, the long waiting times people have to wait to receive said care, and even the fact that most of the population is getting older. Whatever the issues are, they are still all present in Canada and need to be solved in the future to offer a more positive healthcare experience to its people.
What do you think are other healthcare issues in Canada that are not mentioned above? Share your thoughts below.
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