Editor, The News:
There is something not right about our health care system.
It seems the family doctor and the emergency doctor are starting to live in separate areas.
The family doctor had both his office patients, as well as admitted hospital patients to take care of and was able to be a friend. Now the family doctor wants you in for 15 minutes including time to write up a report on you, which means one problem per visit.
In that time, he would simply like to push a new pill on you to hopefully solve the problem.
When you go to the emergency room, you are registered for a particular reason per what you think is wrong. We have to go through sometimes many tests to get to the real problem. This can take hours for you and the patient doesn’t always understand the test results.
It is this confusion that we think we should go to our family doctor. But then that could take weeks.
Some days you may have to wait a long time at the emergency and perhaps you could have gone to a walk-in clinic.
Ron Tucker
Maple Ridge