PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT: With more boomers set to retire, overburdened N.S. health-care system can’t afford red tapeWith chronic medical staff shortages and a growing part of the population over age 65, eliminating bureaucratic inefficiencies in Nova Scotia's health-care system is vital, Paul Schneidereit writes - UnsplashA few days back in this spot, I talked about how Pharmacare red tape can waste family doctors’ time and cause grief for newly retired patients.
The Houston government has put a greater emphasis on recruiting and retaining family physicians. But with hundreds of baby boomer family docs aging out of the system, the challenge just to keep up remains daunting.On July 1, nearly 223,000 folks 65 or older called this province home. That’s 21.8 per cent of our population of 1,019,725, says Statistics Canada.
As a group, older folks have more health-care demands. More seniors mean more pressure on a provincial health-care system already groaning under the strain of staff shortages.Now, let’s take Dr. AJ and her patients’ experiences with Pharmacare and scale up those impacts system-wide. Individual doctors’ frustration is also problematic. Physicians able to retire if they wanted might well say, “the heck with this.” Their younger colleagues might say the very same thing but head down the road to another jurisdiction. It’s not like there aren’t job openings for doctors, well, just about everywhere — a lot of them paying considerably more.
Yes, I know, Pharmacare — and the publicly funded system as a whole — simply can’t ignore the need to verify that expensive medications are appropriate. There’s a concern that physicians, without checks and balances, and constantly being courted by pharmaceutical companies, might prescribe without concern for the public purse.
Harpell, who praised Pharmacare as a highly valuable program, said that perhaps pharmacists might also play a role in helping to reduce inefficiencies.
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