Canada
This article was added by the user . TheWorldNews is not responsible for the content of the platform.

Canadians worried about state of provincial health systems: Poll

A new survey suggests the vast majority of Canadians have concerns about the state of the health-care system in their province, particularly in Atlantic provinces.
A new survey suggests the vast majority of Canadians have concerns about the state of the health-care system in their province, particularly in Atlantic provinces. Photo by Andrew Vaughan /THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — A new survey suggests the vast majority of Canadians have concerns about the state of the health-care system, particularly in Atlantic provinces where hospitals have struggled to maintain emergency services for months.

Leger and The Association for Canadian Studies surveyed 1,554 Canadian adults over a two-day period in January.

From our newsroom to your inbox at noon, the latest headlines, stories, opinion and photos from the Toronto Sun.

By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails or any newsletter. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300

Doctors, nurses and patient advocacy groups have been frantically waving red flags about the crisis unfolding in Canadian hospitals since the pandemic began, when intensive care units and emergency rooms were flooded with patients.

Since then, the already burnt-out workforce has steadily declined, leaving fewer health workers to cope with waves of flu and other respiratory illnesses at the end of last year.

About 86% of people surveyed across the country said they are worried about the state of health care, compared to 94% of those surveyed in Atlantic Canada.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

The people surveyed were slightly more concerned about the state of health care if they reported receiving care in the last year.

People in Eastern Canada also worry about the quality of care they’ll get if they need to go to an emergency room: 81% say they’re concerned, compared to 67% of Canadians overall.

The labour shortage in that part of the country has repeatedly caused temporary emergency room closures, forcing patients to travel farther for the care they urgently need.

In Nova Scotia, those closures mainly happened in rural hospitals, a government report issued late last year shows.

Countrywide, 90% of rural survey respondents reported concern about the state of health care.

Overall, 54% of Canadians characterize the quality of their provincial health system as good or very good, while 43% say it is poor or very poor.

Canadians’ assessments of their public health-care systems are rather dim when compared to the answers of 1,005 Americans surveyed, 74% of whom graded their own health system as good or very good.

As provincial and territorial governments try to work through surgical and diagnostic backlogs that accumulated over the course of the pandemic, some have turned to private clinics to ease the load. The move has created a polarized debate about private delivery of public health care.

Of Canadian respondents to the survey, 53% said they do not want to see more privatization in their provincial health-care systems.

As the federal government negotiates with provinces to pay a larger share of the bill for health-care services, 69% of Canadians who responded to the survey said their provincial governments were not putting enough money into the system.

The survey cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered truly random samples.