‘Where do you go when the public system says you’re fine? It’s scary,’ — Moose Jaw Cardiologist Dr. Jeffery Wilkinson.
Governing politicians in particular would surely prefer health matters in a campaign be addressed calmly, delicately and quietly.
An hour later, NDP Regina Douglas Park candidate Nicole Sarauer held a press conference revealing that “the AIMS payroll and procurement system for doctors, nurses and hospitals is less than halfway implemented and has now cost taxpayers $203 million.”
But for as much noise as you’re now hearing during this campaign about administrative nightmares in public health care, the lack of family doctors, overcrowded emergency rooms and hospital wards and long waits for surgeries or to see a specialist, there’s been precious little talk about fundamental change to delivery.
We’re not even hearing the Saskatchewan United Party call for private health care, although its leader, Jon Hromek, last week unveiled his plan for a “Saskatchewan Integrated Healthcare System” that would allow non-government clinics to “provide services to meet the demands of local communities while remaining publicly funded.”
But elections are seldom a good time to quietly discuss changes … even if quiet changes are already happening.
It has been a year since Moose Jaw cardiologist Dr. Jeffrey Wilkinson began billing his patients outside the public medicare system — not as some bold political statement but in response to a public health system he says was restricting his ability to practise medicine in a way that best served his patients.
“I have never felt better in my entire life,” Wilkinson said in an interview, when asked what it feels like after a year of directly billing his patients.
It would have been “so much easier” to remain in the public system because of the added administrative headaches, Wilkinson said.
But being able to take as much time as is necessary with each patient during a visit rather that having to slam them through to fit the fee schedule outlined by the province is gratifying, he said, adding that his patients share the sentiment.
“They want to feel like they have power in the relationship,” Wilkinson said. “This has been lost.”
Charging $350 a visit, Wilkinson said his rate is really no different than dental visits that are often covered by employers’ private health plans — and certainly far cheaper than the fees of the Mayo Clinic or some other U.S. provider.
In the past year there have been occasions when patients have come to him because a family doctor didn’t pick up on a serious condition after a stress test or misread an EKG monitor and it resulted in a bypass operation, he said.
“Where do you go when the public system says you’re fine? It’s scary,” Wilkinson said. “There is nothing wrong with a second opinion.”
Some of the more rewarding visits are simply about relieving the mental stress of those who have spent “eight months thinking in their head, the thing in your chest is not working.”
The Moose Jaw cardiologist said he would like to see a conversation exploring the benefits of a private component within the public health system.
But it seems doubtful politicians now want that noisy conversation.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Our websites are your destination for up-to-the-minute Saskatchewan news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and leaderpost.com. For Regina Leader-Post newsletters click here; for Saskatoon StarPhoenix newsletters click here