June 28th, 2009

Canada has the best health care system in the world--unless you get sick

Posted in  Government  Health Care  Politics 
Author: Tom Giovanetti || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA

One could blog every day with instances like this, where Canadians with health emergencies end up having to come to the U.S. for treatment.

A critically ill Hamilton preemie turned away from McMaster Children's Hospital is all alone in a Buffalo intensive care unit because her parents don't have passports to get across the border.

Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.

Her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, couldn't follow their baby because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States. They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

"I just want to be with her," said Paquette. "She only knows my heartbeat, my voice and her daddy's voice. It's all I can think about. I feel so helpless."

A second area mom has also been separated from her children since being turned away from McMaster's NICU, which is closed to new admissions about 50 per cent of the time.

Christina Holjevac had to leave her 12-year-old twin boys in Beamsville to follow her daughter, born 13 weeks premature at McMaster May 16, to Ottawa. Hamilton's NICU couldn't take her two-pound, two-ounce preemie named Lauren Catharine Hope Trottier and Ottawa had the closest open bed.

Did you notice the bit about the NICU being closed to new admissions about half the time?!

Here's the blog opinion of a Canadian on the story.

Oh, yeah, let's definitely take the U.S. system in this direction. That's a brilliant plan.