The health care system: the problem is....

That there are problems in the health syustem is not news.

There have been for decades.

There can be arguments about what constitutes a problem but the fact remains all is not well in the system.

Anyone who has to sit six or more hours in an outpatients/emergency department knows this.

And now with hospitals in this region facing problems like having to close emergency departments every weekend as they do in Digby and not having beds for those who need them every week we see first hand the problem.

Code purple is the term used by hospital officials when patients requiring a hospital bed outnumber the beds available.

Much of the problem is caused by the fact that we have people in hospitals taking up patient beds who should not be in the hospital.

Some of them are there for extended periods of time while plans are developed to move them into another setting. In the meantime people who should be admitted can’t be properly accomodated or are warehoused in places they shouldn’t be.

There are other problems as well.

As health minister Chris d’Entremont says in our page 4 story this week: “If you’re going to be discharged and you have to wait for your physician to discharge you it would be better for the system if you were discharged at nine o’clock in the morning and not at five o’clock in the afternoon.”

As we say, problems in the system have long been with us; solving those problems doesn’t start with recognizing them, it starts with actually fixing them.

And if hospitals are being used as warehouses for people who should not be there the solution is not to talk about it but to actually have facilities that can be properly utilized.

As the population ages it should be clear that we are going to need more beds in long-term care facilities. Certainly many more than have recently been announced for this area.

And until the day comes when we properly address those issues, with action not talk, we will continue to see people warehoused in our hospital on stretchers and in rooms that were not designed for patients.

That’s the problem.