"A sign of discontent with Canada's health system is the growing number of complaints made from patients to Alberta MDs about unsatisfactory healthcare experiences. What is also alarming is that the College, when it does pay attention to the complaints, does not appear to address the root causes of the problem (the possible flaws in the medical system itself). Rather, a short-sighted "band-aid" approach has been used to temporarily put out the fire, which may lead to more complaints. With the Health Accord expiring in 2014 and federal elections around the corner, Alberta's issue may be signal Canadians to push for a re-structuring of the medical system that reflects patient-centered care that acknowledges and uses the valuable feedback from patients to improve care."
(From Mike Y)
I totally agree with you that patient feedback is useful and valuable.
ReplyDeleteThere's one interesting point we learned about in health economics a few days ago - that if you improve quality of care for individual patients, because of limitations in budget/funding, the total number of patients able to be seen will decrease. MDs generally tend to advocate for patient care quality, whereas administrators advocate for healthcare coverage for society (increased number of patients serviced). True, doctors can be more compassionate themselves...but the system in which they work (designed by administrators) can be improved to more greatly incentivize more compassionate care from MDs. So maybe the complaints about low quality of care is directed at the wrong people? Maybe citizens need to be complaining to the administrators, and not the MDs, about low quality of care? (trouble is, we can access doctors more easily than our system admins....)