COMMENTARY: Canada's health system needs a broader foundation |
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COMMENTARY: Canada's health system needs a broader foundation
Every few months we hear another troubling statistic about Canada’s health-care system. Emergency departments are overcrowded. Family physicians are burning out. Recently we heard about one in 10 emergency room doctors leaving their jobs. Wait times continue to grow. Prince Edward Island has one of the highest rates of people without a regular primary care provider.
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The usual response is for the government to ask for more funding, more physicians and more hospital beds. Those are important. But they won’t, by themselves, solve the problem.
Part of the challenge lies in how we think about health.
Health and well-being
For more than a century, Western medicine has been remarkably successful at treating disease. Vaccines, antibiotics, surgery and modern medications have saved millions of lives and dramatically increased life expectancy. When someone has pneumonia, a heart attack or appendicitis, modern medicine is extraordinary.
But many of today’s greatest health challenges are different. Mental........