Ryerson Medical Centre: A Case Study

INTRODUCTION

Waiting times for patient health care have been widely considered a problem in a variety of environments, including hospital emergency rooms as well as health care clinics. They remain one of the most significant issues facing our health care systems, and many studies have been conducted looking to improve current medical center situations. The main issue creating such problems is that hospital and health care clinic's facilities and resources have become insufficient, leading to chronic overcrowding and patients not being treated efficiently -- sometimes in the case of an emergency. This article aims to analyze and understand the functionality of the Ryerson Medical Centre, through conducting in-field research and
This also considers the availability of doctors and nurses working in the hospital or clinic. In the clinic under study nurses are currently not employed. However, by hiring physician’s assistants the requirement of having the doctor present would be reduced, and thus more patients could be booked into a shorter amount of time. Physician's assistants are healthcare professionals that are authorized to work in the medical field under the supervision or sponsorship of a doctor (American Academy of Physicians Assistants, 2011). They can carry out consultations and assessments regularly performed by a doctor, while therefore freeing much time used by the doctor. The PAs can further conduct patient interviews, histories, physical examinations, order and interpret laboratory results, or counsel patients. This approach has been widely used in the United States, and has recently been implemented in the Canadian Military. By spreading this method to the public sector significant improvements could be seen in patient health care as well as a reduction in waiting times. This of course must consider the space requirements for carrying out this operation -- because the current clinic is quite small it would be difficult to increase the number of medical staff
The way the wait times are managed and reported needs to be amended so that healthcare practitioners and patients are knowledgeable about what their options are. This change will only come about if the matter is taken seriously by the government as well as practitioners in the field. The first step to improve the system is to increase funding allocated to this issue. The accountability also must be taken into consideration by creating and striving to meet and exceed benchmarks, as well as accurately report on how long patients are actually waiting. The government would need to commit to this problem fully, and provide necessary funding in order to take action. The use of information technology must also be implemented in order to create public patient registries and improve current management tools for wait times. Increase in health care professional and assistants should be focused upon as well in order to ease congestion in the healthcare system. By increasing the number of medical staff in both hospitals and clinics the volume of patients required to be seen by a single doctor could be significantly decreased, thus eliminating a great deal of stress on both the patients and the physicians. Cooperation from all parties is required in order to take steps forward to improve public health