International News
United Kingdom
Kate Kelland - 07.01.10
Novartis AG's cancer drug Afinitor has been rejected for patients with kidney cancer by Britain's health costs watchdog, which says it is too pricey for the country's taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS).
Emily Andrews - 03.06.10
A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital. Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help. They arrived on the ward only...
Kate Devlin and Rebecca Smith - 09.21.09
Doctors were making mistakes in up to 15 per cent of cases because they were too quick to judge patients' symptoms, they said, while others were reluctant to ask more senior colleagues for help.
While in most cases the misdiagnosis did not result in the patient suffering serious harm, a sizeable number of the millions of NHS patients were likely to suffer significant health problems as a result, according to figures. It was said that the number of misdiagnoses was "just the tip of the iceberg", with many people still reluctant to report mistakes by their doctors.
Daily Mail Reporter - 09.01.09
Thousands of women and older people are dying unnecessarily because they are denied proper treatment after a heart attack, claim British researchers. Doctors are failing to prescribe a full range of medication to one in five heart attack survivors which...
Daniel Martin - 08.31.09
Patients in Health Service hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warned yesterday.
They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat.
Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations.
Jenny Hope and Nick McDermott - 08.26.09
Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.
The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.
Daniel Bates - 08.26.09
After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.
Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.
But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.
Laura Donnelly - 08.02.09
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Jane Merrick - 07.26.09
Drug addicts could be among those given priority for vaccines against the virus, the official in charge of the Government's response to the swine flu pandemic has suggested.
Professor Lindsey Davies, director of Pandemic Influenza Preparedness, told a parliamentary committee that people with long-term maintenance conditions, such as those receiving methadone treatment, could be included in the "vulnerable" groups that the NHS will target first.
The suggestion, which is likely to cause controversy, was made to the Lords science and technology committee, which will publish a damning report this week into the Government's handling of swine flu.
Laura Donnelly - 07.25.09
David Bowles, the chairman of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, quit on Tuesday after being threatened with suspension when he refused to commit his organisation to meeting national waiting targets.
Mr Bowles accused NHS bureaucrats of attempting to bully him into making promises that would have put the safety of patients in jeopardy.
Daniel Martin - 07.21.09
NHS treatment will be available for tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers to ensure their human rights are honoured, it was announced yesterday.
At present, they are denied free treatment if an asylum bid has been turned down but they have not left the country.
James Tozer - 07.07.09
A horrifying journal of the neglect a great-grandmother suffered in hospital has been published by her family.
Betty Dunn, 79, was admitted with a routine stomach problem but died six weeks later after a string of medical errors.
During this time her relatives compiled the diary detailing her ordeal in a ward they grimly nicknamed the 'zoo'.
Press Association - 07.01.09
The NHS is failing to deliver proper care to 852,000 diabetics in England - 60% of the total - according to an audit by the NHS Information Centre.
Vital checks recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for cholesterol, blood-sugar levels and body mass index are not being carried out, it says.
Selina McKee - 06.11.09
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is sticking by its original decision to reject the use of Alzheimer's disease drugs in patients with mild forms of the condition, as it claims they are not a cost-effective use of NHS resources.
The Institute first ruled against the use of the acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors Aricept (donezepil), marketed by Pfizer and Eisai, Novartis' Exelon (rivastigmine) and Shire's Reminyl (galantamine) on the National Health Service in March 2005, acknowledging that they were clinically effective but stating that, at £2.50 a day per patient, they do not provide value for money.
Nina Lakhani and Jonathan Owen - 06.07.09
Senior doctors who speak out against dangerous practices are being frustrated or even bullied into silence, according to new research by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Three-quarters of hospital consultants surveyed have had concerns about patient safety, professional misconduct or bullying at some point, and seven out of 10 have spoken out to managers. But one in six said they had been warned that whistleblowing could jeopardise their careers, despite laws that supposedly protect NHS staff who report substandard care.
The publication last week of the BMA's Speaking up for Patients report comes less than two months after Margaret Heywood was struck off the nursing register for professional misconduct, because she went undercover to expose the treatment of elderly patients for a BBC documentary.
Laura Donnelly - 06.07.09
People arriving at Accident and Emergency departments with symptoms which could indicate the aggressive spread of the disease are waiting weeks for diagnosis and treatment while "routine" cases are prioritised.
Hospital managers told researchers that treating desperately sick patients more quickly would "reflect badly" on their performance against Government cancer targets which only cover those referred to specialists by GPs.
Laura Donnelly - 06.07.09
People arriving at Accident and Emergency departments with symptoms which could indicate the aggressive spread of the disease are waiting weeks for diagnosis and treatment while "routine" cases are prioritised.
Hospital managers told researchers that treating desperately sick patients more quickly would "reflect badly" on their performance against Government cancer targets which only cover those referred to specialists by GPs.
- 06.05.09
Many people at risk of a major stroke are not getting potentially life-saving operations quickly enough, according to new research.
A study carried out by St George's University of London has claimed that many people who have suffered so-called mini-strokes are not being given artery surgery as quickly as they could be and are therefore being put at risk of suffering a major stroke.
The surgery should be carried out within two weeks of a patient suffering the mini-strokes, but the researchers found that in their sample group of 5,500, this only happened in around a fifth of cases.
Jenny Hope - 06.04.09
Doctors are railing against politically correct language in the NHS which turns patients into 'clients' and 'service users'.
They fear the NHS is using over-complicated language to downplay the seriousness of some conditions.
Sam Lister - 06.04.09
People with Alzheimer's are languishing in care homes and being given excessive drugs in treatment programmes reminiscent of the Victorian approach to mental illness, a leading researcher claims.
John Zeisel, a sociologist specialising in neuroscience, said the way that sufferers of the disease were cared for in Britain required an overhaul. There needed to be greater emphasis on activities to stimulate engagement and improve language skills, such as day trips to the seaside, painting and community activities.
"There needs to be far more non-pharmacological treatment that must be built on people's capacity -- building on the skills that are left, not just trying to fix the functions that people have been robbed of," he told The Times. "Otherwise, we leave people to languish in settings that do nothing for them, have no meaning, and they just wilt away."
- 06.04.09
Prof Robert Howard, dean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP), said the number of UK doctors was far too few to fill hundreds of training posts.
He pointed to an over-reliance on overseas doctors, saying some were brilliant but cultural awareness was an essential part of being a good psychiatrist.
He said: "Catastrophic is the word I would use for the shortage we are now facing.
Laura Donnelly - 05.31.09
Correspondence between the head of a Liverpool hospital and the chief executive of the local ambulance service reveals angry attempts to blame one another for failings which meant dementia patient Gladys Joynes was left in a bed wedged between a bath and a commode.
The makeshift accommodation at Royal Liverpool Hospital was so unsuitable that the 79-year-old, who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease, had to be taken off her drip when the machine's batteries ran out, as it could not be plugged in.
Laura Donnelly - 05.30.09
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors - in some cases for more than five hours - before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.
Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients - or are diverting them to different sites - in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them.
Michael Savage - 05.25.09
The personal medical records of tens of thousands of people have been lost by the NHS in a series of grave data security leaks. Between January and April this year, 140 security breaches were reported within the NHS - more than the total number from inside central Government and all local authorities combined.
James Meikle - 05.24.09
New questions about recruiting doctors from abroad to cut NHS waiting lists have been raised by research that suggests problems suffered by patients after knee replacement surgery at one treatment centre in England were 10 times worse than the average for the country.
Hundreds of people were referred to a centre in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where teams of Doctors from Sweden, Denmark and Iceland performed operations as part of a drive to cut waiting lists. About one in five patients had to have their operation redone.
David Rose - 05.22.09
Two thirds of NHS trusts are unable to cover the cost of providing maternity services as the birthrate rises, with little evidence that £330 million of extra funding is improving care for mothers and babies, The Times can disclose.
Chronic underfunding of midwifery and obstetrics care has produced deficits that run into millions of pounds in some trusts. Money is being taken from other hospital departments to cover the shortfall. Other trusts have the opposite problem, with up to £15 million of maternity funding remaining on their balance sheets at the end of each financial year.
Roy Maxwell - 05.19.09
The National Cancer Plan, 2000, illustrates the point. It was promised that, by 2010, five-year survival rates for cancer would compare with the best in Europe. A study reported in The Lancet Oncology (April 2009) has shown that despite huge expenditure the plan is failing to produce significant improvements. That will not surprise clinicians who have had experience of the massive bureaucracy that surrounds cancer care.
Laura Donnelly - 05.09.09
The specialists feel so uncomfortable discussing treatments that their patients may not be able to afford that just one in five routinely disclose the existence of drugs which the health service will not pay for, according to charity Beating Bowel Cancer.
Its findings come as a parliamentary committee prepares to publish a report into changes in Government rules to allow patients who pay for such treatment to continue to be cared for by the NHS.
Rebecca Smith - 04.26.09
Guidance on the use of Lucentis for age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the UK, does not include similar conditions which also threaten sight.
This means that local NHS trusts can refuse to fund Lucentis for sufferers of other conditions, leaving them no choice but to pay for it privately or lose their sight.
- 04.25.09
The audit found serious gaps in aftercare services for those who had had a fall. The government said it was taking action to improve services.
David Rose - 04.23.09
One in four stroke victims are still not receiving the best treatment, despite overall improvements in care, a national audit has found.
Quick access to a dedicated unit is considered the best way of saving lives and preventing disability due to a blood clot or bleeding on the brain.
But despite the Government publishing a national stroke strategy in December 2007, a quarter of patients were not treated in a dedicated stroke unit last year.
Sarah Boseley - 04.21.09
Sir Ian Kennedy, appointed to lead the watchdog after his 2001 report into child deaths after heart surgery in Bristol, said that despite the regulatory body's successes, progress on the care of children had not been as great as he would have liked. "What is getting in the way of doing what almost all right-minded people would think was a fundamental social obligation to its next generation? I wish I knew the answer."
John R. Graham - 04.16.09
The advocates of government-run medicine base their claims on the notion that health care is a "right." They thus attempt to occupy the moral high ground over those who advocate reforms based on the principle of individual choice.
Jenny Hope - 04.16.09
Older stroke victims are getting a raw deal from the age discrimination that dominates the Health Service, researchers claim. They say younger patients receive a better level of care, including more diagnostic tests and lifestyle advice.
Kate Devlin - 04.08.09
The question, which revealed how staff viewed the care offered by their own section of the NHS, has been dropped with little fanfare from an annual poll of 160,000 workers.
The decision to drop it comes to light just weeks after a damning report criticised deaths at one healthcare trust where the majority of its staff stated that they would not want to be treated.
Press Association - 04.04.09
The NHS was told today to stop relying on charities to fill funding gaps after figures revealed many trusts would not pay the full cost of electric wheelchairs for disabled children.
Daily Mail Reporter - 03.30.09
A report by think tank Reform claims that NHS staff spend 50 per cent more time off sick than private sector workers and says the health service has a 'dinosaur' attitude to employees' wellbeing. The report also says the NHS could save £1 billion a year if it followed the example of private firms and encouraged it's staff to take more exercise and eat better food. Andrew Haldbenby, Reform's director, said: "Government is a dinosaur in the evolving world of better health. In the recession the out of date practices of most NHS organisations impose costs that the nation can ill afford."
- 03.29.09
Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that up to 10 million hospital meals are thrown away every year because of the poor standard of food. Hospital meals can cost as little as £1.50 per head. Of 129 million meals ordered in NHS hospitals last year, 10.7 million were not eaten. Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Norman Lamb, said: "The fact that thousands of patients leave hospital malnourished is a national disgrace. Nutrition is an essential part of care."
Patrick Sawer - 03.29.09
On the advice of her GP she rushed to Stafford Hospital for an urgent scan only to be told that, because it was Friday evening, there were no scanning facilities available and she needed to come back after the weekend.
Daniel Martin - 03.24.09
Research in the European Cancer Journal has found the number of patients being cured of cancer is steadily climbing across Europe but cure rates in England and Scotland still trail behind those in many other European countries. A comparison of cancer patients treated across Europe shows that cure rates for common cancers increased between 1988-90 and 1997-99. England and Scotland did not do as well as most of the 15 European countries analysed. Professor Mike Richards, the national director for cancer services, said: "We are seeing that people in general can be cured of their condition. The main difference between ourselves [ England and Scotland] and other countries now is related to late diagnosis and that is why it is so important to raise awareness and knowledge of the symptoms but also get across the benefits of early diagnosis".
Martin Beckford - 03.20.09
A report by the Healthcare Commission has found a shortage of beds at the Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust led to seriously ill children being admitted late and others being sent to hospitals many miles away from their homes and families. Other failings identified include poor training for theatre staff and a shortage of appropriate equipment. Anna Walker, the commission's chief executive said: "Serious issues were raised but not properly or rapidly addressed over several months. While I would not say there were ' Third World' conditions, there were serious potential risks in the way care was provided."
Rosa Prince - 03.20.09
A report by the New Local Government Network has said dentists trained at the tax-payer's expense should spend at least half their time working for the NHS. The step is needed to address a, 'crisis,' in NHS dentistry, says the report, in which one in five people have no access to treatment. Around 4,000 dentists have left the state system since 2006, when new contracts were introduced and the report says that given the £175,000 it costs to train a dentist, this represents poor value for the taxpayer
Daily Mail Reporter - 03.15.09
The mother of a paralysed rugby player who became the youngest ever person to undergo assisted suicide today criticised his treatment by the NHS.
Julie James said that that her son, Dan, received 'disgraceful' care from two hospitals in the hours following the accident in March 2007, when a scrum collapsed on him.
Daily Telegraph - 03.13.09
Almost 500 patients have been crippled and injured so badly by NHS hospital care that they have received more than £1m each in compensation, landing the taxpayer with a bill for £1.2bn
Dail Mail Reporter - 03.11.09
Patients have been told they must be quizzed by Health Service officials if they want to keep their name off a national medical database
Chris Brooke - 03.11.09
A teenager died from massive cancerous tumours after his GP repeatedly failed to diagnose the disease and told him to 'grow up a bit and stop worrying', an inquest has heard.
Daily Mail Reporter - 03.05.09
Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.
The Government's rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.
- 02.23.09
"It is right that people are concerned about the damaging impact efficiency savings could have on our health service. My department has to find some £700million over the three year Comprehensive Spending Review period. This enormous sum of money, which is the largest of any department, must be found within a budget that is already stretched to its limit.
Daniel Martin - 02.17.09
Patients should not expect to be prescribed antibiotics to cure coughs and colds, the Government will warn today.
David Wilkes - 02.06.09
All NHS staff who discuss their religion with patients face losing their jobs, it was revealed today.
A Department of Health document warns talking about religion with patients could be considered harassment or intimidation.
Editorial - 12.22.08
For the past nine years the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been called upon to make judgments on matters of life and death.
Its role, in essence, is to ration healthcare by assessing the cost effectiveness of new treatments. The startling advances in drugs that can alleviate the symptoms of lethal diseases, particularly cancers, presents it with a particular dilemma, for these new drugs are frequently very expensive.
Kate Devlin - 10.08.08
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is considering removing the drugs from patients and giving them only when their condition worsens.
At the moment many patients receive the medication on a permanent basis, to prevent relapses, which campaigners say is the only way that they can carry out normal daily tasks, such as holding down a job.
Paul Hsieh, MD - 08.18.08
Supporters of government-provided healthcare often attribute longevity to healthcare access without considering the impact of other factors. Healthcare access in the U.S. has less of an impact on mortality statistics than trauma.
Laura Clout - 02.18.08
Doctors have launched a campaign on behalf of a war hero who has been told he must go blind in one eye before he can receive NHS treatment and accused Gordon Brown of "incompetence" in managing the health service.
* Falklands hero wants fair payout for soldier disfigured by Taliban attack
More than 120 doctors have sent £5 cheques to Downing Street, made out to the Prime Minister, in the hope of shaming him into helping former RAF bomber Jack Tagg. The 88-year-old was recently diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in Britain, which affects an estimated 500,000 people.
Stephen Pollard - 03.15.06
There is a golden rule in public policy: the name of a body is, almost always, the exact opposite of its real effect on the world. The UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence, known as NICE, is a typical example of this phenomenon. Hailed by the Labour government, which set it up in April 1999, as a means of promoting excellence across the National Health Service, its real effect--one might say its real purpose--has been rather different: to restrict the variety of treatments available to patients. Not so much NICE, in other words, as NASTY: Not Available, So Treat Yourself.
Canada
Claire Sibonney - 05.31.10
Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada's provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system. Ontario, Canada's most populous province,...
Kenyon Wallace - 02.02.10
Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States. Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for. "He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done," said Ms. Dunderdale, who will become acting premier while Mr. Williams is away for three to 12 weeks. "In consultation with his own doctors, he's decided to go that route."
Jack Fink - 07.17.09
Last week, 20-year-old Colton Read, who grew up in Arlington and who's now in the U. S. Air Force, went to have laparoscopic surgery to remove his gall-bladder at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Jessica Read says around 10 a.m., about an hour into the procedure, "A nurse runs out, 'We need blood now,' and she rounds the corner and my gut feelings is, 'Oh my God, is that my husband?'"
She says his Air Force general surgeon mistakenly cut her husband's aortic artery, but waited hours to transport him to a state hospital which has a vascular surgeon. "It took them until 5:30 to get him to UC Davis. I don't understand."
Because Read lost so much blood during that time, doctors had to amputate both legs. His mother sobbed, "I watched him take his first steps, and now his legs are gone."
Investors Business Daily - 06.09.09
Health Care: Before we're forcibly plunged into a state-run medical care abyss, Washington should look at the blunders made in Oregon. The state system there is basing treatment decisions on political popularity.
Sally C. Pipes - 06.05.09
KEY DATA: The average patient waiting period between referral and actual treatment for 12 most-frequently needed specialties was nearly four-and-one-half months in 2008, double the average from 15 years ago.
KEY DATA: A third of Canada's gamma cameras, used in nuclear medicine imaging, and a quarter of its angiography and cardiac catheterization labs, for heart-related ailments, are more than 10 years old.
Tim Waggoner - 06.04.09
Lung cancer patient, Barbara Wagner, was recently notified that her oncologist-prescribed medication that would slow the growth of cancer would not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan; the plan, however, she was informed, would cover doctor-assisted suicide should she wish to kill herself.
"Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan," read the letter notifying Wagner of the health plan's decision.
Daniel Eriksson M.Sc. and Arne Björnberg Ph.D. - 05.01.09
The Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP) is a centre for visionary thinking and action- promoting consumer-related healthcare in Europe. HCP declares that "Tomorrow's health consumer will not accept any traditional borders." In order to become a powerful actor, and to build the necessary reform pressure from below, the consumer needs access to knowledge in order to compare health policies, consumer services and quality outcomes. In the 2009 Euro- Canada Index, Canada's Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP), together with HCP, continues its commitment to evaluate health policy across Canada. All the European countries included in the Index share Canada's commitment to accessible and effective healthcare. By comparing the performance of Canada's healthcare system with the extremely varied systems in Europe, we can gain much insight into how Canada is succeeding and how it can improve.
Karen Dearne - 04.30.09
Patients may have to pay for their own electronic health records, with the key healthcare reform body urging the federal Government to mandate "person-controlled" systems commercially available from providers like Microsoft and Google.
Dr. Keith Martin - 04.27.09
Contrary to public opinion, Canada does not have "the best health care system in the world." We actually rank 26th, and yet have the fifth highest expenditures for health care.
Nadeem Esmail and Maureen Hazel with Michael A. Walker - 10.01.08
This study is the Institute's eighteenth attempt to document the extent to which queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures are being used to control health care expenses. When we began producing waiting list measures in 1988, there was anecdotal evidence that hospital waiting times were becoming significant. However, there were no systematic measurements of the extent of waiting.
David Gratzer - 06.25.08
Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures
Marc Vander Maas - 04.03.08
More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.
CTV.CA News Staff - 03.27.08
About 70 per cent of Quebec's dentists have opted out of the public health-care system, leaving children under 10 and welfare recipients scrambling.
Lisa Priest - 01.03.08
More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here. Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins.
Kim Priestap - 10.11.07
Sarah Plank, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Ministry of Health, said a spike in high risk and premature births coupled with the lack of trained nurses prompted the surge in mothers heading across the border for better care.
Robert J. Cihak, M.D. - 09.01.04
Fifty percent of the Canadian hospital administrators said the average waiting time for a 65-year-old man requiring a routine hip replacement was more than six months.
Sweden
- 03.05.09
Dr. Olle Stendahl, a professor of medicine at Linkoping University, pointed out a side effect of government-run medicine: its impact on innovation. He said, "In our budget-government health care there is no room for curious, young physicians and other professionals to challenge established views. New knowledge is not attractive but typically considered a problem (that brings) increased costs and disturbances in today's slimmed-down health care."
Walter E. Williams - 03.04.09
A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, "Delay, Denial and Dilution," written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the NHS health care services are just about the worst in the developed world. The head of the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care.
Sven R. Larson Ph.D. - 04.01.08
Rationing of care is a reality under universal health insurance. Yet, its advocates seem universally oblivious to it. In an effort to unmask the reality of "universal coverage," here are some actual case histories of real people with real experiences.
Other Countries
SwissInfo - 03.24.09
Hundreds of doctors in cantons Vaud and Geneva have hung up their stethoscopes for the day in protest over new laboratory tariffs and general working conditions.
Ministry of Health and Prevention - 10.01.08
In the health care service, the general practitioners act as "gate-keepers" with regard to hospital treatment and treatment by specialists. This means that patients usually start by consulting their general practitioners, whose job it is to ensure that they are offered the treatment they need and that they will not be treated on a more specialized level than necessary.
Julie Rovner - 07.31.08
At first glance, Switzerland's health care system looks like it could be the perfect political compromise for the United States.
As Republicans would prefer, individuals -- not employers or the government -- choose from a broad array of health plans, sold by private insurance companies.
Martin Johnston - 04.20.08
Murray Benton has had to wait more than two years for life-saving heart surgery promised by Auckland City Hospital.
That's more than 18 months longer than he should have had to wait under the Government's strict policy of offering surgery only to those who can be treated within six months.
Regina E. Herzlinger - 11.19.07
America, a nation prone to love at first sight with seductive health-care fixes, is now falling for the systems of the Netherlands and Switzerland. Their representatives recently displayed their dowry in D.C., and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt personally checked out the potential brides earlier this month.
Bojan Pancevski - 06.05.07
Officials have uncovered evidence that two clinics in Switzerland are helping clients to die who are simply depressed rather than suffering from incurable pain.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, the clinics have been accused of failing to carry out proper investigations into whether patients meet the requirements of Switzerland's right-to-die laws.
Civitas.org - 01.01.02
The 'cornerstones' of the Danish healthcare system are: it is a public healthcare system
predominantly financed through general taxes; healthcare is organised in such a way that responsibility for services provided lies within the lowest possible administrative level, usually the county councils (subsidiarity); there should be universal, free and equal access for all 5.4 Million citizens; it should promote efficiency, be of high quality, and enable free choice of provider by users.
Karen Davis Ph.D. - 03.10.01
Primary care is much more accessible in Denmark than the U.S. A mixed capitation-fee-for-service method of paying generalist physicians in Denmark assures that everyone has a primary care physician, and generalist physicians are responsive to providing services quickly, typically same day appointments. An organized off-hours service assures accessible care 24 hour a day, 7 days a week care. Denmark has the highest public satisfaction with health care, reflecting the value placed on accessibility of primary care.
|
|
