I am very like my mother and my brother with respect to getting things done. I want the appointments made "yesterday " , with no hold-ups . I find it extremely aggravating that it takes days before my mothers notes from England are sent over to Canada and I find it frustrating to get constant voice mails and a shortage of a live person on the other end of the phone. Based on my own experiences and my work with the Ovarian Cancer Canada I think that it is vital for a patient to become their own advocate in the health system .I was very interested in the timely article in this weeks Macleans magazine about "Taking Contol Of Your Health" . Its a dirty little secret in Canada that there is no such thing as completely socialized medicine and despite laws prohibiting private clinics and doctors, two tier medicine is on the rise in this country. The problem is that there is little or no affordable or widespread private insurance like BUPA in England and so it is only the fortunate few that can jump the queue.
Technology can do a great deal to streamline patient access to care , reduce waiting times and avoid duplications and errors. Recent studies have shown that Canada ranks among the two worst industrialized countries in the world for the computerization of health files. I have done some research into a company called Medicor which is a private cancer care management group that places the computerization of a patients medical records at the core of its services. It collects all the relevent information from a patients various doctors and hospitals and stores it on a PDA so that physicians working in the public system can deliver better care. I find it an interesting and progressive concept and puts the patient firmly in charge of their own health care .
