Jewish General to push patients away
The Jewish General’s excellent reputation is telling against it. Now the government wants it to reduce its throughput by advising some patients to seek care closer to home.
Two thoughts: wouldn’t it be a better principle to try to encourage hospitals in the suburbs to study what makes the Jewish so good that sick people will travel distances to be seen there?
Also, let’s try telling Westmounters to go home and be treated in a Westmount hospital.
Kevin 12:51 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
There’s rep, and there’s facilities.
I was at the Jewish yesterday to see my GP, and had to go to Orthopedics to make an appt. to consult with their surgeon.
The department is ONE guy — who himself is recovering from a bad accident, so as you can imagine, they have an immense backlog.
Joey 12:54 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
Not sure how much suburban hospitals can do when the #1 thing the Jewish (and the General and the Royal Vic, etc.) has going for it is that it’s a teaching and research hospital associated with a top medicine faculty.
Kate 13:45 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
True. if your specialist is at the Jewish you will find yourself going to the Jewish, it’s unavoidable, and from what I hear it has the city’s top oncology people. And when someone has cancer, do they settle for being given painkillers and dying quietly in a suburban facility, or do they go downtown and find somebody who might be able to give them more effective help?
Carrie 14:20 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
Kate, it’s worth mentioning that for more serious illnesses (like cancer) and/or more immediate health concerns (like incontrolled asthma or a bad bone break), you really are better off to make the trek to the downtown teaching hospitals or to wherever your primary physician is affialited with (where and when possible). The teaching hospitals are top notch because they’re associated with universities as teaching/research centres and you are going to get better care and follow-up there. This is a no-brainer. In addition to that, the top people tend to work in the downtown university-affiliated hospitals with better funding and better equipment.
I live in the city, but if I didn’t, I’d still make the trek. I know where the best care is here and its not at the smaller older and crappier hospitals that are essentially decades behind in everything from infection control to equipment that looks like it came from the 60′s.
That said, most other “less serious” stuff can be treated equally well at the suburban hospitals allergic reactions, cuts and fevers etc… (with the exception of pediatrics of course – I’d head straight to the Children’s or Ste. Justines given children can rapidly worsen without much warning).
What I’ve never understood about Quebec healthcare is why the CLSC’s don’t operate more like the Walk-In Clinics scattered all over southern Ontario do. Many of these are open until 11 or midnight 7 days a week. I used them when I lived there many years ago and the 2 hour wait sure beat the 8-12 hours in emerg with my ear pounding (at the time) where by the way, you are deemed non-urgent anyway in emerg with said pounding ear. The Walk-In clinics took some of that edge off the more minor stuff. The trauma who comes in always gets priority and well they should.
Quebec does a lousy job of informing the general public about these realities and hearing that the emergency departments are overflowing once again in the news does little to change that. I suppose its all about liability in the end, and poor planning on the part of the government. There appears to be no interest in rectifying these ongoing issues.
The hospitals have their hands tied. They’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
Consider it the ongoing inertia that healthcare has become but do go to the best centres. Your life could very well depend on it.
Jack 14:45 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
It is however gratifying when our health care administrators get their priorities right.
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/quebec-canada/sante/201207/18/01-4556990-difficile-detre-servi-en-anglais-a-la-ramq.php
Marc 16:19 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
But Jack, how else will people understand that Quebec is a French society?
Kevin 17:31 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
Revamping CLSCs like @Carrie mentioned is not a new suggestion. It would be the single most useful thing any government could do to eliminate the doctor shortage.
I’d settle for 15 hour days at clinics. 7 am until 10 pm. A team of doctors/nurses/practitioners who have access to your files.
Jack 18:51 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
@ Marc I agree with you that Quebec has one official language and that prominence of French is what makes this an interesting place to live, but man this is overkill.
” La Régie vous informe qu’elle communique d’abord en français avec sa clientèle.» Il faut plus de 35 secondes avant que les indications qu’un service en anglais est offert soient données. Lorsqu’on appuie sur le 9, la boîte vocale répète, dans la langue de Shakespeare, que la RAMQ favorise le service en français avec sa clientèle.”
Marc 20:14 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
Jack, of course it’s overkill. I was being facetious. :) Which, granted is hard to tell when reading text on a screen.
jeather 21:24 on 2012/07/19 Permalink
I like how they are supposed to use French even if you speak in English if they think you understand French. I guess if you don’t say “I don’t understand”, they assume you do.
(That said, whenever I have spoken to a government employee I have had perfectly pleasant experiences in both official languages.)
david m 12:14 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
i wouldn’t want anglophones to leave quebec, but it’s irritating when they demand special accommodation. i can’t think of another sub-national level of government in the developed world where a linguistic minority representing 8% of the population gets the sort of service we anglophones do in quebec. considering how easy it is to learn french (i did it when only a child!), it seems a legacy/courtesy service that our generation (20-40 years old) oughtn’t to assume to be a right.
Kate 12:20 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
well david m – how did this hospital thread turn into a language thread? never mind – who built the Jewish, the Vic, the General, the Children’s? I’m afraid it was anglos. We have a historic stake in the provision of health services here – otherwise why would the government be going to great expense to build two crazy huge superhospitals?
Kevin 13:10 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
@david m.
You forgot to mention that french Quebecers only make up 2% of the population of North America. It’s another way to justify being so gracious while pretending that only people who have direct ties to England speak English :/
Seriously, name another place in the world with two strong founding peoples. Montreal is unique, it has unique rules. Deal.
david m 13:47 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
well, i mean, the anglos in calcutta and south africa built hospitals too. the point is that quebec is on an irreversible course toward full francisation, and while at the margins the incremental changes towards this surface as irritations, but globally, the trend is clear. personally, i don’t have to use the english and i feel sort of embarrassed to do so, given that i’m capable of speaking french about as well as a university educated francophone. that’s me, personally. my father, who can barely do more than order a coffee in french, needs the english service. but our generation (i assume virtually everyone reading this blog is in my cohort) speaks french and our children will probably be more comfortable in french than english. an increasingly francophone staff at the old anglo hospitals (anyone tries speaking english at the children’s lately?) is just what we should expect. montreal is in transition. deal.
Jack 13:55 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
I am guilty of language turning this thread, my bad.@david m I was thinking of your Dad when I posted this story, their is a pre-76 generation and a post-76 generation of anglophones in Quebec, the ease in which younger Anglo’s speak french is not shared by a lot of our older folks, for a variety of reasons.However when they call the RAMQ as full fledged citizens, tax paying citizens an 80 year old doesn’t need a lecture or a sermon, just a health card.
Kate 15:22 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
david m says: quebec is on an irreversible course toward full francisation
I think you’re mistaken on this.
I don’t really welcome the domination of half a dozen languages in the world, but it’s a fact, and French is not one of the major ones. French won’t die, it has too much culture and too many speakers in postcolonial places, but Quebec cannot close its borders politically or culturally, and anglos keep seeping across the borders and coming to live in Montreal. That’s not going to stop.
Besides, Spanish is getting steadily stronger here. It’s a bigger language with nearly 400 million world speakers as compared to 120 million for French (numbers here). In another generation we’ll have more languages being spoken here, rather than a retreat to a French monoculture.
david m 18:54 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
i think we’ll have to disagree. the nexus of legislation, attrition and exclusion make for a straight-forward result. for sure, some anglophones eke out their livings in montreal, in low-paying or sporadic jobs, and there are still various anglo professionals serving an ever-shrinking base of customers. but as the old networks fall away for whatever reason and the new networks exclude anyone without a professional-level french, the future for anglo montreal becomes increasingly bleak. everything from saq employee to deloitte accountant requires a near-native mastery of the french language at a minimum.
the government has spent 40 years consolidating francophone domination of all aspects of quebec society, scores of anglophones have moved on to more friendly climes, and the taxes and language prevent others from staying or moving at all. i’m pretty sure that the pq is going to solve the student crisis by introducing phenomenal increases on the fees charged non-quebec students (so the 5000/year canadians pay will go to 15.000/year) and that’ll pretty much sink concordia and mcgill as major sources of new canadian blood. with pressures like these, it just seems inevitable.
Kate 12:19 on 2012/07/21 Permalink
david m, I’m counting on a change in zeitgeist to avoid the progression to a sterile monoculture that you describe.
In the 1950s, anyone visiting Quebec might’ve expected it to remain devoted heart and soul forever to the Catholic church. By the mid-1960s thousands of Québécois had walked away from the church for most purposes, using it only for weddings and funerals as they do now, and ceasing to let it dominate their lives so that we now have the lowest rates of churchgoing in North America. People are still digesting that change.
In the 20th century protests usually contained a lot of “Le Québec aux Québécois” type chants. The recent demonstrations still had some implicit nationalist content (someone’s always carrying a big flag) but the intent was not primarily nationalist or separatist. And people whose first language is not French do keep immigrating here, and the internet keeps opening things up.
Your arguments are based on government policy, but recent fragmenting of the nationalist option plus a wider and more gathering international roar against the ruling plutocracy and in favour of more social justice is going to bring a wave of change here too. I mean, who would’ve predicted Quebec would chuck out the Bloc Québécois and vote massively for the NDP?
One thing is certain: it’s never safe to predict the future solely by extending existing trends. The zeitgeist will always throw you a curve – and in this case I’m counting on it.