It comes as little surprise our health-care system is under stress, but what does raise eyebrows is how many Canadians are flocking south to get treatment.
A three-part Metroland special report, beginning today with part two to appear in tomorrow's paper and part three to run next Wednesday, clearly shows the demand for health care American-style is growing by leaps and bounds.
Many Canadians are not content to sit and wait for MRIs or CT scans. Nor are those with the resources prepared to limp around for half-a-year -- the average wait time in Ontario for a knee replacement is 182 days -- when they can get one done in Colorado in two weeks.
The Ontario government has been swamped with requests for procedures for out-of-country care. At the beginning of the decade, it funded just 2,110 procedures. That shot up to 11,775 last year, nearly a five-fold increase.
Medical brokers have jumped in to meet a rising demand for out-of-country care, finding deals and locations for treatment for Canadians who want swift, high-quality health care. It's a growing industry.
And the government is contracting out services to some 40 U.S. hospitals and centres where Canadians can receive treatment.
While it's inevitable some Canadians will always be willing to visit private clinics to get care, the spiralling numbers are troubling and suggest a public health-care system providing underwhelming service for overwhelming demand.
Such cross-border medical treatment is just another indication of the need for the Province to work overtime to fix problems with health care that include the need for more family doctors and more nurse practitioners, shorter waiting times, more research, more MRI and CT scan machines and more specialists.
In this series, you'll meet several local people who found it necessary to leave Canada to get the treatment they desperately required. Uxbridge boy Carter Miller, 6, needed to go to a southern California hospital for three surgeries to have outer ears attached after the Province refused his request for treatment until he turned 10 years old. And Bowmanville woman Tammy Wallace-Smith was forced to get treatment in Buffalo at the Erie County Medical Centre after a lightning strike at her home caused second- and third-degree burns to 65 per cent of her body. She had originally gone to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto where she had to wait 12 hours for a bed.
While it's important Canadians get the very best medical care possible wherever that may be, there should be better options here at home. Our tax dollars are supposed to be funding the best health-care system in the world, but for too many people, the wait is too long.
-- Metroland Durham Region Media Group
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