Violence in hospitals gets out of hand

Violence seems a part of life for those working on the front lines of this country's health care system.

The impact of workplace violence on the health care industry is enormous, exacting a heavy financial toll, according to a 2006 survey by the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia.

Facts in figures concerning violence against health care workers:

Injury claims

Nine percent of all B.C. health care workers' accepted claims are due to violence.

More than half of the accepted B.C. claims for health care workers are from nurses aides and licensed practical nurses.

One in five of the accepted B.C. claims for healthcare workers, due to violence in the workplace, is from registered nurses.

$24-million was spent from 2002 to 2006 in workers compensation claims involving violence against health-care workers, including physicians, nurses, care aides, pharmacists, housekeeping staff, technicians and administration.

162,934 days were lost in 2006 due to accepted claims of violence against health care workers in B.C.

Fourteen B.C. health workers were injured every week in 2006, as recorded in accepted violence claims.

Most often hurt workers' body parts in attacks

Arms, including wrists, fingers and elbows: 27 percent

Backs and shoulders: 25 percent

Head, including neck, face, eyes, ears and scalp: 14 percent

Violence against nurses in Canada:

A national survey of nearly 19,000 nurses done by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Health Canada and Statistics Canada in 2005 found the following:

29.6 Percent of nurses working in hospital said they were physically assaulted by a patient over the past 12 months

49.6 Percent of nurses who worked in a long-term care facility, such as a nursing home, said they were physically assaulted by a patient over the past 12 months

43.6 Percent of male nurses have faced physical assaults, be they in hospital, nursing homes, a community health centre or other health care settings

27.9 Percent of female nurses have faced physical assaults in the same settings

46.3 Percent of nurses working in a hospital said they were emotionally abused by a patient over the past 12 months

48 Percent of nurses working in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, said they were emotionally abused by a patient in the past 12 months

54.3 Percent of male nurses have reported suffering emotional abuse over the past 12 months, be it in a hospital, nursing home, a community health centre or other health-care related settings

43 Percent of female nurses have reported suffering emotional abuse in the same settings

46.7 Percent of nurses under 35 reported they have been emotionally abused by a patient in the past 12 months

38.2 Percent of nurses over 55 reported they have been emotionally abused by a patient in the past 12 months

Groundbreaking national health survey starting soon

In the next few days, a groundbreaking national health survey is planned to be starting in British Columbia.

The survey is initiated to discover what kinds of toxic chemicals are present in Canadians' bodies, as well as examining other health issues such as obesity and disease other diseases.
Nearly 700 residents in the province will be surveyed.

By the end of 2008, more than 5,000 Canadians between the ages of 6 and 79 will have been tested.
Participants must agree to a series of physical exams, fitness testing and blood and urine tests. They'll also be required to wear an activity monitor for seven days.

According to Jeanine Bustros, the director of the physical health measures division of Statistics Canada, the survey could have major significance for health policy, depending on the findings.

"This survey will allow us, for the first time, to have a benchmark," she said.

"To be able to measure: Are we getting better? Are we getting worse?, in terms of the levels of contaminants in the Canadian population."

StatsCan will put the findings together for Health Canada and Canada's Public Health Agency. The results will become the first-ever comprehensive health study that directly measures things like obesity, lung function, chronic disease and levels of toxic chemicals in the blood.

Individual health results will be , but will be provided to participants who request them, within weeks of testing.

Only Canadians who are contacted by Statistics Canada are eligible to participate.
The results of the survey are confidential and protected by privacy laws, but will be given to participants within weeks after testing on request.

Source: CBC News

Canadian Blood Services needs 'New Blood', literally!

As we continue through the holiday season, there's one gift that's always in demand: blood.

About every minute, someone in Canada needs a blood transfusion.

It's disturbing to learn then that a sizable portion of the population can't donate needed blood or bone marrow because they don't speak English or French.

Apparently, Canadian Blood Services can't accept blood from these people because of concern over their inability to accurately answer sensitive questions about their health and lifestyle that could affect the safety of the blood supply.

The service says it doesn't have either the staff to translate applications or nurses who speak multiple languages.

In a province where more than a quarter of the residents don't speak English or French as a first language, it's a significant issue.

Especially since the best chance of finding a match for some products like bone marrow is within a recipient's own ethnic group.

We'd have thought Canadian Blood Services would try harder to accommodate our multi-racial and multi-lingual reality. The language barrier isn't one that can't be overcome.

As far as safety is concerned, while many questions asked of donors help to pre-screen blood, afterwards the blood itself is tested for hepatitis, AIDS and a variety of other diseases.

The existing pool of blood donors is becoming older and fewer.
If the Canadian Blood Service hopes to do its job in the future, it's going to have to make changes.

We need new blood, literally!

This year, in British Columbia , Canadian Blood Services will need to collect 1,200 red blood cells or platelet donations by January 4th to help meet hospital needs.

For all of Canada, call Canadian Blood Services at 1-888-2-DONATE (1-888-236-6283) for blood donor clinic information, eligibility information or to book an appointment.

Source: Chilliwack Times

Canada recruits hundreds of Practical Nurses from Jamaica

Hundreds of Jamaicans were recruited in October to work in health care, the construction and hospitality service sectors in British Columbia through the Ministry's Canadian Overseas Employment Programme.

The group included mainly certified practical nurses, but also a group of pipe-fitters, welders, and carpenters.

Over the years, Jamaicans have been recruited to work in Ontario, Montreal, Quebec and New Brunswick on the Overseas Farm Work Programme but this is the first time that employees are being requested for the health care, hospitality and construction sectors.

Canada will be recruiting approximately 2,000 practical nurses by the end of 2008.

As part of the recruitment programme, there is a partnership between the Okanagan College and the HEART/NTA, to ensure the certification of workers so that they will be ready to go directly into the workforce once they arrive in Canada.

Source: JIS

Growing trend Multiple Births in Canada

There is a growing trend of multiple births in the western world.

According to Multiple Births Canada, between 1974 and 1990 the incidence of twins rose 35 percent, triplets climbed 300 percent and quadruplets skyrocketed 400 percent.

In the last five years alone, according to Statistics Canada, the incidence of triplets has increased 14 percent across the country.

"Primarily it's because of reproductive technology," said Dr. Bill Mundle, medical director of the Windsor Regional Hospital maternal fetal medicine department.

"People who are having trouble getting pregnant will often go through treatment, though sometimes they get more than what they bargained for."

This year, on January 7th in Vancouver, Canada's first set of sextuplets were born, eclipsing the country's famed Dionne quintuplets, born May 28th, 1934.
Not all the sextuplets survived, however.

Multiple-birth children are often born prematurely, which is why the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority will soon limit the number of multiple births which reproductive-technology doctors in the United Kingdom can produce.

Heather McAuley, president of the Parents of Multiple Births Association Windsor Essex County, said another reason more twins and triplets are being born is because the average age of women having their first children is rising.
Older women produce multiple-birth children more often than younger women.

Source: Times Colonist

Lobby to reverse directive on $500 administration fee out-of-country patients

Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed has thrown his support behind an initiative by Whistler Health Care Centre (WHCC) staff to lobby B.C. Ministry of Health officials to reverse a recent directive on administration fees charged to out-of-country patients.

Local health care providers say that in the past three weeks they’ve counted at least 64 people who have left the centre after learning of the $500 administration fee for anyone who needs to see a doctor.
In an article in The Question last week, Dr. Bruce Mohr and others said they worry that some patients whose conditions should be assessed and treated by a doctor will go untreated, potentially leading to “adverse outcomes.”

Before Nov. 22, non-Canadian residents coming to the WHCC emergency room were charged a $400 administration fee for significant problems such as broken limbs, but only a $90 “minor” fee for issues that required only a brief doctor’s assessment and perhaps a prescription. Since then, all out-of-country WCSS patients have been required to pay $500 to see a doctor for either an initial or follow-up visit, no matter what their medical condition.

Mayor Melamed said he supports Dr. Mohr’s call for community leaders to send a letter to B.C. Health Minister George Abbott seeking to reverse the directive because of the number of out-of-country patients who visit the WHCC.

“We think there are provincial and national interests at stake here,” Melamed said. “In many cases, Whistler is people’s first and only visit to Canada and it reflects on Canada and British Columbia if people’s first experience here has that negative aspect.”

Melamed said he agrees that fees are necessary and added that local officials aren’t seeking a free ride for anyone.

“What we’re potentially asking, and we’re not there yet, is for some kind of a sliding scale,” he said, adding that health professionals in other B.C. resort towns probably have similar experiences, but perhaps not with the same frequency as those in Whistler.

“It’s not special treatment for Whistler,” Melamed said. “We’re just looking for recognition that it’s not one size fits all. Don’t try and shoehorn all situations into one model.”

Dr. Mohr said that in the short term, the doctors working in emergency at the WHCC are looking at using the offices of Whistler Medical Clinic doctors, upstairs, after hours as an alternative for patients who are non-residents of Canada.

“If patients feel it’s too expensive, we would just take them upstairs,” he said, adding that that doesn’t cover the larger issue.

Question

Alberta might eliminate health premiums

It's for the first time Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is talking about the possibility of eliminating health care premiums as part of his party’s next election platform.

Even though Alberta has been awash in surplus cash for years, the Progressive Conservative government has resisted the idea of dropping health premiums, which only exist in three provinces.
But now Stelmach is signaling that a policy change may be in the works for premiums, which cost $1,056 per year for families and $528 for singles.

Earlier this week Ontario's premier McGuinty announced that despite soaring government revenues, health tax is not going to be scrapped for Ontarians. (read related article here)

“The revenue is close to $1 billion,” he told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview.
“There are a number of ideas coming forward from people that are looking at developing policy positions for the campaign. But we’re far from making any kind of decisions.”

Health Minister Dave Hancock said he has been talking to government caucus members for months about how the province can eliminate or at least reduce health premiums for some people.
Hancock says he would like to see the province create incentives for people to lead healthy lifestyles. "Whether we collect it as a premium or we collect it as tax, we should give people credit for the things that they do to remain healthy," he said Wednesday in an interview.

The message to Albertans would be: "We can take health-care premiums off, but you have to do something for it."

“That’s what I’m promoting, that we take a look at how you can earn your premium back by doing some pre-screening tests, by engaging in health activity, those sort of things.”

The group Friends of Medicare was delighted to hear that the government appears to have had a change of heart over health premiums, which are also charged in Ontario and British Columbia.

“This is the time to get rid of these premiums. We’ve never been wealthier,” said Suzanne Marshall, executive director of the Edmonton-based lobby group.

Edmonton Sun

U.K. public health care system flops, unlike Canadian health care system

Most Canadians are proud of their public health care system.

It's paid for by everybody and used by everybody, it pools the cost of treatment and care.

Like every other health care system in the developed world it has its problems but, contrary to the claims of its enemies, it isn't in crisis.
Until recently, Britain has been like Canada.
Canada's National Health Service, despite its problems, is doing a good job and improving. But its future has been put at risk by the introduction of market forces and profit-seeking providers.

Some B.C. politicians and other private health care lobbyists are claiming that U.K. health care privatization is a success. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Britain recently introduced private hospitals, much like B.C.'s private surgical clinics, to carry out the cheap, less-risky operations on generally healthy patients.
In other words, they "cherry-pick" the profitable work and leave the NHS hospitals to care for less healthy people and all the other complex procedures.

Yet operations in these private hospitals cost on average 11 percent more than in public ones. And these profit-seeking companies are a guaranteed flow of funding.
So if their contract specifies 5,000 patients a year and only 4,500 go there, the private hospital gets paid for the full 5,000.

The former chair of the British Medical Association, James Johnson, has said, "I see hospital services destabilized as a result of over-emphasis on the use of the independent sector . . . the money could often have been better spent making greater use of existing NHS capacity."

While the incomes of private sector hospitals are guaranteed, public hospitals have been forced to compete, not just with the for-profit outfits, but with each other. To do that, the government introduced payment by results, the politicians call this "patient focused funding."

The result has been a mess. The new system was supposed to introduce fiscal discipline, but in its first year the NHS overspent its budget for the first time in 60 years. Hospitals cut back on services to clear deficits, resulting in major backlashes against the Labour party government all over the country.

The troubles don't end there.

The introduction of "patient-focused funding" and market forces has increased the proportion of the health budget spent on bureaucracy from four per cent to approximately 15 percent.

If the money is "patient focused," you have to set up and run a system that tracks both the patients and the money.

Preparing bids costs money. Lawyers and accountants have to be paid. Hospitals have to calculate, log and code each patient's costs. Then they have to send off the bills. The purchaser has to check them.

Some bills are challenged, more lawyers and accountants. And clinicians have to divert time from treating patients to tracking paperwork.

When privatization was introduced, it was presented as a solution for reducing waiting lists and costs. But in reality neither the private sector nor the "patient focused" funding are responsible for cutting the waiting lists in the U.K.

The Vancouver Sun

Editor's opinion:

"I think that governments of countries with a public health care system should keep an active eye on competition. They should impose laws on treatment in private health care facilities that compete with public facilities when the particular treatment is covered by the system."

Smoking costs more than only your health!

A new survey suggest that smokers in British Columbia could save between $2,000 and $4,000 a year by quitting and that is only the half of it.

Smokers, their family and friends, who would be spared the perils of their secondhand smoke would all have a dramatically improved health outlook and lower life insurance premiums,

In addition, Dr Fred Bass, an expert in smoking cessation and consultant to the Health Heart Society of British Columbia, found that smokers and their cohorts across Canada could save the health care system more than one billion dollars a year.

He added, "About seven per cent of our total health care bill is attributable to smoking, and those costs are not just in the last years of a smoker's life.
Research shows that smoking also interferes with recovery from surgery and those who stop just two months before surgery face fewer pulmonary and cardiovascular complications and spend fewer days in intensive care."

There's no doubt that smokers themselves are most aware of the impact that smoking has on their wallets. What many smokers may not realize is how much it adds up to in the long term. The average 45-year-old smoker, who quits today and puts the money into savings, could have more than 100,000 dollars to spend during retirement while they enjoy their smoke free health, according to a survey commissioned by Pfizer Canada, a pharmaceutical company.

Almost five million Canadians, or 19 percent of the population, are smokers. According to Health Canada, close to half of smokers will die from smoking before they turn 70 years old.

British Columbia has the lowest smoking rates in Canada at 16.4 per cent, Bass said, although it jumps from a teenage rate of 12.4 per cent to 24 per cent between the ages of 20 to 25 when young people have money, are out of school, and are targeted by tobacco marketing.

ASH

485 New Brunswickers' Medicare records disappeared

"Medical records simply vanished"

The medicare information of 485 New Brunswickers has gone missing, Health Minister Mike Murphy told the legislature Tuesday.

The data was being sent on four magnetic tapes from New Brunswick to Richmond, British Columbia on Oct. 3 by courier. The confidential medical records of 133 British Columbians were also lost.

"This is a very regrettable incident and I want to tell those whose personal information is contained on the cartridges that we are very concerned and proactive over what has happened," Murphy said.

There is no evidence that any of the information contained on the computer cartridges has been misused, Murphy said.

The government will be doing whatever it can to protect the information contained in the records so that it is not misused and will continue to try to locate their whereabouts, the minister said.

"The information is written on technology that is only used in data centres. We believe it was misplaced. There is no evidence otherwise and we are doing a full review."

The data was being sent under an agreement about sharing information about residents of one province using the health system of another.

Records show they arrived in the western province on Oct. 5 but somehow vanished without getting into the hands of provincial health officials.

The exact sequence of events is not yet clear, said Murphy, and New Brunswick is continuing to investigate what happened.

New Brunswick health authorities were not informed that the records were missing until Oct. 25 and Murphy said the province's director of medicare operations was not told until Nov. 29.

Murphy found out late last week.

"There has been a failure of communication within the Health Department, a failure of communication within jurisdictions and a failure of communication to the public," Conservative MLA Bruce Fitch told the legislature."This is a very serious matter!"

The province has issued a directive to British Columbia stating it will now only send billing information on encrypted compact discs rather than the out-dated cartridge format that has been in use since 1989.

New Brunswick hopes to have an electronic health record system up and running by 2009 and Murphy has promised to table legislation in the spring to protect those files.

CBC

Editor:

"There seems to be a lot of failure lately!"