Madam, – I read “Another health system’s problems” (HEALTHplus, January 11th) with interest since I am physician in Ottawa, Canada. I can tell you that our health care system is under siege. Wait times across the country continue to be a serious problem. Hospital capacity in various cities including Ottawa, Calgary and Montreal continue to run at well over 100 per cent, leading to emergency wait times of many hours and sometimes days.
Elective surgeries are being cancelled because of lack of capacity, lack of human resources and lack of funding. Canada’s government monopoly health care system is ill equipped to deal with changing demographic and economic circumstances yet many Canadians who have not had to interface with the health care system recently do not understand the challenges it is facing. – Yours, etc,