Monday, June 08, 2009

Yet Another Reason I'll Never vote Green

As if I didn't have enough of them already, now here in the Nova Scotia election we've got a Green Party candidate advocating closing small ERs in favor of family doctors and walk in clinics.

While I'm all for the latter, the former is yet another pathetic idea from a pathetic excuse for a party. These aren't just numbers we're dealing with here, they're people's lives. The saddest thing of all is this candidate is a doctor! In serious cases such as heart attacks the first hour is critical, do you really want someone you love to have to ride 30-45 minutes of that first hour just to get to a hospital? Not to mention the time it takes for our severely underfunded ambulance system to get to them.

We need MORE ERs, not less. If the ones we have are too big and bulky I have no problem with reducing their size to more accurately meet the needs of the communities they service, but closing them altogether leaves zero options on the table if people need help or God forbid a disaster strikes.

As for the walk in clinic option, people don't just have problems 9-5. It'd be nice if that was the case.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

There are several ways to look at a heart attack. You can look at more GPs and clinics for easier access for all to receive ongoing health and preventative medicine, diet and exercise advice so that more of the population is in better health generally (more people carry more weight than ever...),
or you can have lots of ERs.

Walk ins are seldom business hours only, generally several days each week into the evening hours...

Frankly, I think that this green idea is a good one, and more parties should just claim it for their own.

Hishighness said...

Well, that was just one example. What about car crashes, or broken bones, or gunshot wounds, etc.