Monday, December 11, 2023
Healing Health Care in the Pontiac

A big complex creature

Once again, we hear that our health care services here, as across the country, are overwhelmed, mostly with pediatric respiratory cases. In the hospitals, emergency rooms and intensive care units are swamped. An emergency room filled to 200 per cent? Patients on stretchers in corridors for more than 36 hours? How could this happen? Why are we overloaded again? Have we not learned from the pandemic?
Unfortunately, the answer might be more complicated than we would like.
The health system is not a factory in which you control what comes in and what goes out. When people are injured or sick, the health system must deal with the patients who come to the door.
And the health system is a big creature. It is so big that anyone trying to draw a chart of all its interconnected components would produce a very abstract piece of art. Some say a cat would lose its kitten in there.
This big creature is made up of parts that . . .

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