Surrey memorial has been over capacity long before this wave of seasonal illness came. It’s not somthing new, it’s the norm. Now you have to deal with the wave of oldies coming in with RSV, Covid, etc. on top of the myriad of other BS

So can anyone with first hand experience visiting an ER tell me if it's filled with 20 and 30 something brown people or are they packed with aging white and Asian people as I suspect?

It also seems like walk in clinics are no longer a thing since covid as well, dr's want to only do phone appointments and even getting that is next to impossible. For me that's frustrating since I haven't had a Dr in years and I want to see someone face to face not to talk to them over facetime. I think thats also a big part of the ER being busier then before.

lets just say last time I was at the ER I was the only white person and everyone else seems like they were with their entire family's because their nose is running or they have a cough... Medical is free so may as well take advantage of it right...

Fawwwk, we need to put up signs in the hospital doors in English, Punjabi, Hindi, Chinese telling people to fuck off and stay home unless it's life and death.

Plus do international students get free healthcare? Even the ones attending the diploma mills?

Just had a Xmas party and saw one of my wife’s cousins who is an ER nurse at Surrey memorial and has been for 8-10 years. Loves her job, wouldn’t want to be anywhere but ER

She said shit is so bad you can never keep up, you never gain an inch in triage and the worst problem is when you deal with a brown person coming into ER, it’s a regular occurrence to have to deal with 10+ family members as well.

At Surrey memorial you’re also dealing with an insane amount of OD’s which many are just heart breaking and also taking up huge amounts of beds.

Put them in portables the province says! Lol ffs..

She got into nursing later in life and is now 45 or so and is a very compassionate person who actually wants to make a difference, however she said the ER has a huge problem with retaining people as younger nurses come in and fucking hate it/burn out and either leave nursing completely or move out of the ER. She said it’s a daily occurrence to show up to work and not know anyone working because they are so desperate to fill spots they just cycle people in from wherever, even paying premiums to get them there just because staffing is such an issue

Healthcare system right now is stretched beyond capacity. Just hope you don't get sick! The system is SO broken .. no one knows how to fix it.

Yes. My GF works at VGH and my 80 year old mother has been in and out of the hospital over the last few years at Burnaby Hospital.

Can confirm, the ER waiting room regularly, and along with her various wards were primarily old brown people, and a mix of various Asian flavors.

It's actually quite funny the nurses seem to complain a lot about their older brown patients, specifically women, they tend to complain a lot and be quite demanding, they also seem to have a low pain tolerance (creating those demands), writ large.

The big problem is the aunties/uncles/grandparents who came over with their families, because like I said, many carry morbidities that haven't been addressed or treated back home. Their first point of medical contact tends to be the hospital, and lacking proper medical records or prior diagnosis and treatment is what compounds the system so greatly.

It's the need for testing, scans, you're essentially trying to figure out a problem that has manifested for many years, but never actually treated or even diagnosed prior (as would've been expected).

That's why I rather firmly believe the best solution going forward is to grow the primary care physicians first, and/or expand nurse practitioners services. It is always the cheapest to treat the treatable conditions at the primary care level first, and primary care providers are also in a much better position to monitor long term health conditions than any sort of emergency / acute care providers. That is not to say acute care is not important / less important, but you get the biggest bang for the buck when you spend it on primary care, so that should really be the priority to receive funding.

Do we have private hospitals we can use ? Has anyone used one before ? If the service is this bad in the public system I figure if I do get seriously fucked up I’ll just ship my ass to the states and use their private system. At least I won’t have to wait 2 years for an MRI

Only for stuff not covered under MSP I believe.

With no insurance? RIP to your doggies inheritance. It's stupidly expensive down there.

You know not the depths of Badhobz pockets :D

oh i know, people go broke being sick in the US.

But if me and spy balloon became seriously ill with something serious, i think i rather just spend the money than go through our system.

My mom, her mom both had breast cancer and their trek through the canadian system was long and grueling. Thank god they were able to catch it early, but in hindsight, we should have totally gone overseas to do it.

Her dad got quoted only 500k HKD for a knee replacement in hong kong at a very very fancy place. This is a full on replacement of both knees. It'll take years to get on the waiting list in canada

They are trying to expand urgent care to help with some of these people that are going to emergency with a sore throat or runny nose, something I've never used myself but seems like a good solution if they can get enough of them. They are open seven day's a week, not quite hospital emergency hours but open late.

I know we've built two in the last year one in Chilliwack and one in Vancouver and are currently working on a third in Mission right now and there are others either under construction or close to being started as well. For reference the one in Mission has around 10 exam rooms and 5 assessment/Observation rooms so they are bigger than a typical Doctors office for sure.

They probably need to do a better job educating people that these places even exist.

I was going to bring that up actually. Yes, more and more Urgent Primary Care Centres are being opened up. It does help alleviate some of the congestion we see in hospital from non-emergency visits. Also of note, if the doctors at UPCC feel it's required, they will redirect you to Emergency as needed.

For awhile, we had a sandwich board outside to educate patients on where they should be going for their current condition/issues. It'll take time but more people are becoming aware of the existence of UPCCs.

The lack of new family doctors is partly to blame for the current climate of our healthcare system. For quite some time now, new doctors have found it's more lucrative to visit multiple walk-in clinics rather than upkeep their own practice. The rest of the doctors end up working in hospital. People without a family doctor are of course more likely to visit emergency as they really have no other option outside of walk-in clinic hours. Hence, UPCCs have been created just recently.

We go to UPCC regularly, but they are typically swamped. Never mind the fact that they don't have enough people working, some of the centers don't even have enough space to handle the throughput of ppl.

The best way to get some care at UPCC is to go right when they open, otherwise it's a good chance it'll be a 3-4 hour wait.

My GF went to the urgent primary care in Richmond by Superstore, she doesn't have a family doctor yet and walk-in clinics aren't walk-in anymore... if you don't get there by 3pm they turn you away because you won't make it in before they close and in total she was there for 6 fucking hours. SIX!!!

Believe me, at least in Richmond, everyone knows about it!!!

I was leaving work on my lunchbreak to go bring her food and water while she waited. It was mental. Nevermind she got super sick in the days afterward probably because she spent 6 hours confined in a space with old asian dudes hacking shit up left and right with total disregard for the rest of humanity.

I'm surprised by your FIL's knee replacement surgery cost because HKD $500k is quitie a bit (~Cdn $85k). A relative was quoted ~Cdn $25k / HKD $150k + misc costs for a knee replacement surgery back in April this year at some HK private hospital, and I thought that was a lot of money since it'd be free here LOL~ Of course, the wait is much longer here, but free is "free".

one of my friends went down to AZ in the summer to get his knee done, they picked him up at the airport took him to their place did everything for them and drove them back to the airport a week later. He's going again in Jan to get the second knee don't and he couldn't be happier, his wife loved it since he's taken care of and she can shop. They also have buckets of money and own one of the largest greenhouses in the lower mainland so that helps things lol

The problem here is they refuse you for knee replacement until you're a certain age, because the replacements wear out and they'd presumably have to "do it again" before you die... and they don't want to... so they basically tell you to fuck off and live in pain until you're like 50 and then they'll consider doing it. That's been the experience of several of my coworkers. Same with hip too.

I'm not sure when the one here opened up but my wife found out about it somehow a couple years back. I've had to take my kids there several times and it's great to have for the stuff that's too urgent for a regular doctor visit but not quite requiring the ER.

Right when the urgent care thing opened by me I needed stitches, walked in and was out of there in under an hour, thought great, finally a system that works

Fast forward less than a year and everyone now goes for the simple cough/cold stuff now, and my wife ended up waiting almost 5 hours to get looked at for a pretty serious sinus infection. If I have to wait 4-7 hours to be seen I’m probably more likely to just try and tough it out at home tbh

I only went to urgent care once out in Surrey somewhere but the decent part about it was they'd take your info, give you a time to come back (for me it was like 2 hours) and then when I returned in a couple hours I think I only waited 10-15 minutes before my name was called. I'll take that system over "sit and wait here for 6 hours and if you leave and your name is called you're SOL"