Waiting For National Health Care

From The Australian comes this story concerning a significantly undesirable feature of national health care.

A spokesman from Royal North Shore Hospital confirmed elective surgery has been suspended for six weeks as part of standard practice for the Christmas/New Year holiday period.

Other hospitals were expected to follow suit over the next fortnight, according to a Sydney newspaper.

The spokesman said the hospital closed its elective surgery at the same time each year, but that 10 theatres would remain open for emergencies.

"Every year Royal North Shore shuts down at the same time," he said.

The two primary reasons given for the six-week shutdown are to give doctors and nurses holiday vacations and because people don't want to be operated on during the holiday period. However, not everybody buys into this reasoning. According to Opposition Leader John Brogden,

"[P]eople who need surgery, now, will have to wait well into next year now, and those who are on the list for March get pushed back to June, July, August," he told reporters in Sydney's west today.

"Thousands of people will be inconvenienced by a crazy system that allows hospitals to shut down for six weeks at a time.

"This is a very sinister plan to try and make out to the people of NSW that they can't get doctors because doctors and nurses will be on holidays," he said.

"The truth, in fact, is they simply want to cut costs."

Brogden makes sense. I personally don't think any organization can be considered responsive to the public when it regularly shuts down for six weeks at a time. And, according to Dr. John Gullotta of the Australian Medical Association, "The cancellation of elective surgery lists is a deceitful method used to meet budgets." So, like the British and Canadian systems, the Australian socialized medical system casually disregards timeliness of treatment as an important aspect of health care. (via John Ray)