making drastic changes in life

[Crankin]

Shooting Star, one of my closest friends in AZ is from Montreal. She is an ob/gyn nurse practitioner and midwife and her ex husband is a family medicine doctor. Both trained in Canada, althogh my friend did her NP work in AZ. All of their family who still lives in Canada go to private doctors and use insurance from their jobs. I remember, quite a few years ago, one of their parents needed an angiogram, after some heart incident. He was still youngish at the time, and it was going to be a 2 month wait. My friends were frantic, and used connections to get him in with a private doc. I think that in the end, people who have some other sort of insurance from work use it, to avoid situations like this.

[shootingstar]

If it was life-threatening, it's understandable that your friends wanted to go the private route.

Not sure if all medical conditions need the faster route to a private doctor all the time.
My partner who is a cyclist, had congestion in what he perceived in his respiratory system. Doctor looked at him....3 months ago. Then they fast-tracked him to the local hospital for respiratory and heart tests. To make it sure it wasn't anything else. It was incredibly fast their response to him. He was in the hospital clinic the next day.

This was in Vancouver.

I had a concussion and was in rehab for 6 months last year. I saw my family doctor every 2 wks....that is how heavily monitored I was because I was also on sleeping pills since concussion disrupted my sleep patterns. She had experience dealing with a number of patients with concussion. I did have an MRI a few months later, which the doctor preferred once things "settled down" a few months later. (I did have a CT scan within 3 hrs. of my injury in Vancouver. I was unconscious at that time. They put me on a spinal board....just in case.)

I also saw sleep doctor several times. He is involved in various research studies on sleep and concussion/athletes with the university. So his expertise was real and deep. Both physicians' care for me, were on the public healthy care system. After each diagnosis, I would phone my sister, emergency medicine doctor in Ontario who also deals with concussions. Just to get her informal opinion on the general direction of care, and know that I was under the best care. I was. I did have physiotherapy (6 visits) which were funded by employee health benefit. If I didn't have it, I believe people might qualify for a few (less) physiotherapy visits.

I was injured in British Columbia. I believe the real cost would have been $500.00 for ambulance transport, as a non-British Columbian, but CAnadian patient to pay. (My work benefit paid it.) My hospital care for 1 night 24 hrs. with neurologist, etc. did not personally cost me. There is paperwork sent to the B.C. and Albertan health govn't authorities where they check for Canadian patients if the rate of care is same cost between the 2 provinces. If it's different, I believe the patient pays for the difference.

This is for Canadian citizens who already live in a specific Canadian province and have registered with their home provincial authority for public health insurance coverage. Everyone who chooses to live in Canada is advised to register for public health care coverage. It makes no sense for medical care in Canada if one chooses not to register or use the system. There are VERY few private doctors in the cities where Il've lived..and honest, I wouldn't use them unless there was a compelling reason.

May I say: my father who had diagnosed for prostate cancer for remaining 6 years of his life....did not pay for clinic care, specialist tests, not for the drugs, chemotherapy and palliative care (for 2 months before he died)...at Canada's top cancer research hospital in downtown Toronto. This is what I mean....to live in a major North American city with specialist care already there.

We could have not asked for anything better, Crankin for my father. Would have been a mistake (and waste of money) to go to the U.S. for cancer care, now that we know what limited options he had anyway in his 80's. He was already living in a city with a well-known research and care facility in the Canadian oncology world. His advantage helped maintain a high quality of life with cancer, was his general health....no respiratory, heart conditions at all to complicate things.

The useful thing as a patient, is to find a doctor who does believe in patient education, in addition to diagnosis. But personally I find, my best defense, is to be alert to ask good questions when with the doctor and a doctor receptive to being bombarded with patient questions...which a lot of people don't know how to/stressed out/feel intimidated by doctor/health care professionals.

Since this is a cycling forum: no question that being/becoming healthy at least cuts down more medical complications near the end of life. And for major injury/illness before that, you recover better. I personally vouch for this in my concussion recovery in my mid-50's.