silent_jay here's some numbers: this was done 1994 and 1998 (5 years)
Quote:
America’s Best Hospitals. Response from these institutions was low (eleven of twenty) and somewhat fragmentary. The numbers of Canadian patients seen in the prior year were generally very low: Six hospitals reported fifteen or fewer elective inpatients or outpatients; four hospitals reported 20–60 patients, and one hospital reported nearly 600 patients (90 percent outpatients and many related to proton beam radiation therapy for cancer).
State hospital discharge data: Over the five-year observation period from 1994 to 1998, 2,031 patients identified as Canadians were admitted to hospitals in Michigan; 1,689 to hospitals in New York State; and 825 to hospitals in Washington State.
During the same period, annual inpatient admissions to hospitals within the bordering provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia averaged about 1 million, 600,000, and 350,000, respectively.12 Thus, Canadian hospitalizations in the three U.S. states represented 2.3 per 1,000 total admissions in the three Canadian provinces. Furthermore, emergency/urgent admissions and admissions related to pregnancy and birth constituted about 80 percent of the stateside admissions.
Elective admissions were a small proportion of total cases in all three states: 14 percent in Michigan; 20 percent in New York; and 17 percent in Washington.
Principal diagnostic categories: The distribution of diagnostic categories varied by the type of admission (emergency/urgent versus elective) and by state. Diseases of the circulatory system and injury and poisoning accounted for 37 percent of all cases in Michigan, 39 percent in New York State, and 50 percent in Washington State (50 percent, 23 percent, and 21 percent, respectively, of all cases within the elective admission category).
Within the circulatory system category, the most common principal discharge diagnoses in all three states were acute myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular disorder, heart failure, and conduction disorders and arrhythmias. In New York State, admissions associated with digestive disorders (such as cholelithiasis, gastroenteritis/colitis, and appendicitis) represented 13 percent of emergency/urgent cases.
In Michigan, admissions associated with mental disorders (schizophrenic disorders, affective/depressive disorders, and substance abuse) represented 20 percent of emergency/urgent cases, and the number of cases within this category was much greater than in either New York or Washington. However, we were unable to obtain further details from ministry or state sources.
The remaining cases within the emergency/urgent category were distributed widely across principal diagnostic categories, and there was no consistent pattern across states. The distribution of elective cases across clinical categories was quite broad, with no consistent pattern across states.
|
You are right, not a high volume in comparison to those in the facilities in Canadian hospitals, however, most of those who came to American were, as I said, affluent and I would think a lot of these could be those who didn’t want to wait and had that money for immediate service.
Quote:
'My heart, my choice,' Williams says, defending decision for U.S. heart surgery
By Tara Brautigam (CP) – Feb 22, 2010
An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors.
"This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.
|
I believe he would be considered affluent.
Quote:
|
Private insurance policies: Limits imposed since the early 1990s on out-of-province payments by provincial payers have motivated more Canadians to obtain travelers’ insurance for emergency out-of-province medical care. For example, the number of individual policies sold to Canadians increased from 700,000 to 2,800,000 from 1992 to 1999.
|
I am not making the assumption that you would see a proctologist if you were looking for a psychiatrist. That would be ludicrous, but even in the governmental run military health care system, if your PCM (Primary Care Physician) is out. You get the next available doctor.
My first primary care physician was an internal specialist, told him all my symptoms, came back in a month and he was gone. I ended up with a new doctor, just out of school who specialized in respiratory diseases and was rotating for experience. I had to start all over, it was never properly documented in my chart, and I had a three hour wait to see this guy.
In the end I had to be referred for x-rays, 2 weeks, mammogram, 3 weeks, specialist who then sent me to a surgeon for the lump in my bosom, to a surgeon, duh, why the wait, it was over two months to see a surgeon for possible breast cancer, and instead of discussing a needle biopsy, oh no, she said we need to cut, and take out the mass and some fat tissue around it too.
After my surgery, I got an infection because the new surgeon, who I found out later had only a handful of surgeries under her belt, left the sterile strips on, never told me to remove them, even after I returned to her. I developed a severe infection which lead to permanent disfigurement, I’ll never forget laying on that table in just her exam room as she quietly covered her mistake and stuck a 2 inch needle into my beast to drain the infection, no Novocain but at that point the pain from the infections pressure was so bad the needle felt good, I have to say though watching my “ultra tough” husband almost hit the floor was hilarious, needless to say, I never saw her again. By the way, it was a cyst, a stinken stupid bubble of fluid that had she stuck the fuckin needle into the first time would have popped and gone away, she wanted to cut.
Don’t get me started on when they hit my femoral nerve during a routine hysterectomy that left me partially paralyzed in my left leg for 6 month, I was told, it’s just an angry nerve, oh, that makes it better, thanks for the walker. So much. And I will never forget what they did to my son during his surgery at thirteen month. Oh, my God, even today I want to hunt that nurse and those doctors down and throttle them.
I tell you this garbage, my whining you may say, because, and here's the killer,
You have no recourse, can’t sue the government, and if you complain, it goes into your permanent file and rides at the top of your chart and even before you walk through that door your judged.
No Thanks, Obama. Been there, done that.
And go ahead, ask me about Tricare- the government funded insurance…. hahahahaha.
How different can it be, government run is government run. They may provide it, they may pay for it, but in the end it will be us who pays, twice.