Canadian vs US Health Care

Having been healthy for most of my life, I can tell you that hospital and doctors are not my area of expertice. Recently due to ulcerative colitis and car accident I have visited several emergency rooms/hospitals in the past 2 months. Below are my thoughts on the health system in Canada and the US.



Non Emergency care:

In Canada, people normally make an appointment with their family doctor who can then refer patients to specialists if necessary. Another option is the walk-in clinic where no scheduled appointment is necessary.

The booking process is fairly simple, find a family doctor who is accepting new patients and schedule an appointment. Depending on where you are the wait times varies. Sometimes it can take several months for the next specialist appointment.

I have always had the notion that doctors visits aren't necessary a preventative measure and you only visit the doctor when you get sick, hence my lack of effort to find a family doctor. However I now see the benefits of having a family doctor where they have a history of your illness and can work with you through your health problems. This just didn't seem necessary being a healthy 20 something year old before.

Face time with a doctor or nurse is pretty short during a doctors appointment. Appointment seems to be booked fairly close together. As a result, I have found myself rushed through appointments. The short face time applies to family doctors as well as specialists and is especially true for walk-in clinics.

One of the biggest draw backs with walk-in clinics is doctors in the clinic will often tell you to visit your family doctor. This perhaps is assuming most patients come to walk-in clinics because the weren't able to book a timely visit with their family doctor. This is one of the reasons my UC diagnosis is delayed for 2 years as the doctor in the walk-in did not bother.

Costs: only prescription drugs are out of pocket if you do not have a drug plan.
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The US equivalent of family doctors in Canada are called Primary Care Physician who are also the patients first point of contact and perform checkups and vaccinations and referrals to specialists. This is all very much the same as the Canadian system with the added complication of Health Insurance. With the different number of health insurance companies out there and the varies plans under each company, every patients situation becomes unique. Some insurance plans will allow patients to book appointments with out of network doctors or specialists directly.

One example that was extremely frustrating was trying to make an appointment for my mom to remove staples from her head after the car accident. The specialist who treated my mom in the hospital instructed us to make an appointment with him in a week. Since he was in our insurance network of doctors, I would've thought the process was straight forward. However, we were told that the PCP must give a referral before my mom was seen. And the PCP would not give this referral because we had not visited our family doctor previously, and the earliest appointment with the new PCP was 30 days from now. After several calls back and forth, the specialists clinic made an "exception" and I was able to make the appointment. I also found out that it was against the law to see a doctor out of pocket if you do have some form of health insurance. If this "exception" was not made, then the only choices left open was a visit to the emergency room..fun.

Booking process is roughly a month. Specialist may be willing to accept new patient calls for free consultation from my experiences with a Gastroentrologist.

Costs of doctors visits depends on the type of health insurance purchased. Higher premiums means better coverage. Lower premiums higher deductibles. Basic check up and vaccination is free with health insurance from obama care. The rest is a portion of deductibles and copay policy. Usually prescription drugs will be covered on the basic health care plan.

Emergency Hospital care:

The hospital I was treated at for my Ulcerative Colitis was Hotel Dieu Grace. The wait times in the ER was fairly quick. There were 4 people you registered with before being called in. One to make sure you have appropriate ID, ie. Canadian. Next was basic form to fill out. Then there was a fair bit of wait before you got called in. Then you repeated the same information you told the 3rd person except this time it was logged into their system from the computer.

The overnight emergency staff was more gossipy than I'd imagined having watched too many doctor dramas on tv. Some nurses were not as responsible as others and did not attempt to make the patients feel much better. I can only imagine how tough it is to deal with sick and difficult people all day. They would blatantly make fun of patients in the middle of the night and attempt to rid of as many people in the ER because space was valuable?

The area I was moved to was probably the "intestine" areas, because it was all very old people with stomach, intestine, colon problems. I shared the room with 2 elderly ladies. The bathroom we had in our room was disgusting. I was the only one who could get down from the bed to use the bathroom and was the only one who could smell the stench. This left me no choice to use another one down the hall in the shower room; the only shower room on the floor. I was yelled at for mistakingly using the staff bathroom prior to finding the shower room.

Area: gastro
Facilities: crowded, limited working toilets and showers
Staff: nurses are working 3 shifts, couldn't see doctors in-sight for a few days.
Cost: free
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My impression of the emergency room in the US is much more organized. There were more attentive doctors and nurses than in Canada. Tears just streamed down my face when I saw my mom lying there by herself on the ER bed. Surprisingly there was a doctor there immediately to comfort me with a hug and tell me that everything was okay.

Hospital rooms were much bigger where 2 patients shared a room. And the bathroom was bigger and clean!!! There were many doctors and specialist that can be seen walking around making rounds and it gave you an impression that you were looked after.

Area: Trauma
Facilities: clean
Staff: friendly and fast
Cost: expensive


Overall the Free Health Care in Canada is wonderful. It was a strange feeling being discharged from the hospital without paying a dime. The insurance aspect of a hospital system can be extra burden and costs for patients and staff.

But are Canadian nurses and doctors underpaid or over worked? Because the lack of doctors making rounds, and unresponsive nurse calls are something I like to see less of from the Canadian system.