May 2, 2007

NEWS: For-Profit ER Takes Plastic

Vancouver, Canada, recently became home to the Urgent Care Centre. It sounds fairly generic, but the Centre is the nation’s very first private (read: for-profit) emergency medical facility. The Centre is housed in a six-floor office building on the city’s west side that is said to look “nondescript” from the outside.

Inside, however, those willing to pay up for medical services are greeted with a notion unheard-of in public medicine: no wait-time for attention. The Centre is divided into several parts: the False Creek Surgical Center, the MRI and X-Ray department, and the brand new emergency ward, which is said to be pristine and gorgeous.

But not everyone is a fan of the Centre. As the first private medical facility, it represents a huge contrast to the nation’s universal health care system. Opponents of the Center argue that some Canadians should not be able to receive better health care, just because they are better equipped to pay for it. Fans of the Centre argue that private care is the solution to relieving the nation’s overburdened –and, they argue, unsustainable – system.

Nonetheless, some twenty-four doctors applied for spots at the hospital. Health Ministry authorities sought an injection against the Centre’s December opening, but were silenced when the hospital hired three doctors, all from outside British Colombia. The Centre opened on schedule, with a set price list for incoming consumers. Credit cards are said to be “the rule” for payment here; as many procedures add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.


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