CplKlinger
Senior Member
OK but have they considered that a walk-in clinic would be cheaper??
- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
Whatup
Active Member
14 billion? Insane. It reminds me of the 10 billion that will be spent to upgrade the Montreal airport. Canadian governments spend money like drunken sailors with little regard for the impact on taxed out citizens. Imagine if they spent 14 billion on preventative treatment to help make Canadians healthier, make wiser eating and lifestyle choices and exercise more regularly.
fromyeg
Active Member
David A
Senior Member
Yes, more spending on preventative care would help, but governments of course are so short sighted and don't do enough because it is easy to cut this out of the annual budgets.
They also put off big capital projects as long as they can and of course the price tag goes just up and up over time. However, eventually it all has to be paid for one way or another.
Sound familiar?
They also put off big capital projects as long as they can and of course the price tag goes just up and up over time. However, eventually it all has to be paid for one way or another.
Sound familiar?
yeggator
Active Member
14 billion on bike lanes.
Airboy
Senior Member
You are going to see Covenant build to more wellness centre's soon. But nothing from the GoA. Everything right now is geared to for profit.
Garceyues
Active Member
Any major hospital has plenty of outpatient clinics and routine follow-up with patients. Preventative and ongoing care are a huge part of many such visits, and expanding hospital capacity is necessary to meet the growing need for this. Hospitals aren't just for inpatients on a medicine ward, the ICU, post-op surgical admits, or the ED. You want to know what would be irresponsible? Increasing our population without concomitant increases in funding to services and infrastructure, healthcare being just one example. One cannot complain about wait times and then also complain when we expand healthcare infrastructure, which obviously is going to cost money. 14 billion to construct this over how many years is really not "insane" when you compare it to our annual GDP or the government's budget. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is lower than that of the US and is comparable to most G7 countries aside from Germany (which has been very prudent with managing debt) before someone brings up debt and deficits.
Preventative care outside of hospitals has a role to play in all of this. For example, any family medicine practice has a multitude of patients who have been provided counselling and resources on how to manage diabetes through exercise and dieting. Diabetes is a great example because it costs the healthcare system so much, but the amount of resources we have put into preventative care is really quite impressive - we would almost for sure be spending more without such measures. For example, many patients are connected with dedicated diabetic educators who provide additional support on top of PCPs in management and education of DM. Physicians can also "prescribe" exercise in some jurisdictions, which can help to remove financial barriers to accessing a gym or a physiotherapist. Unfortunately, the reality is that many people do not make lasting sustainable changes to their diet, exercise, or sleep habits despite extensive counselling. It's just frankly not true that we don't meaningfully invest in preventative care. One of the best things we can do right now to up our game would be to rectify the family physician shortage.
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TAS
Senior Member
What's noted above is so important - the further along any physical or mental health condition progresses without diagnosis and treatment, the more costly it will be to treat and the less successful the outcome.
But among the biggest costs in our HC system are end of life care - when quality of life is also its poorest.
johnnyboy
Active Member
Any idea on locations? In the Edmonton region or outside?
inclusion
New Member
As someone with type 1 diabetes, you can see the changes the GOA has made since it considered cancelling the pump program. More specialized diabetic clinics have been set up that can issue orders to get onto the pump program instead of the reverse. They have made a concerted effort to ensure the waitlist for the pump program gets shorter. I think the Premier and Health Ministry heard a lot of feedback from diabetics about wait times to access the pump, and they reversed course on a decision and improved access. I know there are a lot of holes and gaps in our system as a whole, but I've seen the change in preventative care for diabetes in the last couple of years. It didn't take long to implement those changes. Hopefully, other programs are seeing similar changes. Given the prevalence of diabetes, though, it is exciting to see them encourage more people to pump AND to use looping to manage the pump (which is even more insane to me that they are encouraging). For those not familiar, looping essentially runs an algorithm on your phone to automate insulin delivery based on 5-minute increment data from a continuous blood glucose monitor and your insulin pump. You enter carbs, and the application does the rest based on your baseline information. While diet is still important, it's not as critical in this setup as your a1c gets into territory that is widely considered safe over the long term.
I know people like to dunk on the province, including myself, but I think it is important to acknowledge positive changes they have made, too.
wormwood
Active Member
GOA (Alberta Infrastructure) owns all Covenant buildings.
Airboy
Senior Member
Rohit Owns one, the new wellness centre.
archited
Senior Member
Maskwa Centre rendering snapzed from their promotional video...
Airboy
Senior Member
BC Had 22 new and renovated hospitals on the go. St Pauls in Van is $2B, Almost every major centre is getting a new one. As for ours. Newest for us will be Beaver lodge, Which is 30 years late. La Crete will be an addition to double its size. Red Deer Expansion finally going, but again almost 30 years behind the first.Stop farting around with Pronouns Madame Premier B!tch face! Wake up and smell reality! Even 80,000 person shit hole Prince George is getting a new hospital, this along with even a bigger shit hole of Ft.St John as well…..
Preferred design and construction proponent announced for UHNBC Acute Care Tower Project | Stories
Prince George, B.C. – Northern Health is pleased to announce that the preferred proponent team for the design and construction of the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia (UHNBC) Acute Care Tower Project is: EllisDon Corporation – Construction, and DIALOG BC Architecture Engineering...stories.northernhealth.ca
discussions. Stollery has been started and stopped 4 times at least and the design costs are probably over $20 mil. As for the South West Hospital that is another that has had start and stops. again probably between 10-30 mil spent. And currently a cleared but not serviced site. All the civil work was stopped and the pipes have been sitting for 3 years now. If and when Stollery moves to the new site next door the U of A will be able to properly renovate and double current capacity. Once Grey Nuns outpatient moves to the new Covenant Health Wellness centre, GN can gut the space and triple the size of the ER. But I have not heard of any money for that.
wormwood
Active Member
They handle the development - yes. My understanding is that upon full commissioning it'll be no different than any other Covenant facility.