Health & Wellness Best Posts in Thread: Health and Hospitals

I also attend SUMC to see a Blood Specialist and have learnt more about my condition here in the past two years and have been able to do something very positive about it compared to what I have experienced in the past 20+years back in Oz dealing with problems with private Doctors. I have to say I AM VERY HAPPY with my Dr here!

 

A comparison of Health cover worldwide; (Interesting!)

Which countries have the best healthcare?​

Of the 20 countries heading up the list, all but Australia and Japan are in western Europe, where virtually every nation boasts some form of universal health coverage

PARIS, France – Neither Canada nor Japan cracked the top 10, and the United States finished a dismal 35th, according to a much anticipated ranking of healthcare quality in 195 countries, released Friday, May 19.

Among nations with more than a million souls, top honors for 2015 went to Switzerland, followed by Sweden and Norway, though the healthcare gold standard remains tiny Andorra, a postage stamp of a country nestled between Spain (No. 8) and France (No. 15).

Iceland (No. 2), Australia (No. 6), Finland (No. 7), the Netherlands (No. 9) and financial and banking center Luxembourg rounded out the first 10 finishers, according to a comprehensive study published in the medical journal The Lancet.

Of the 20 countries heading up the list, all but Australia and Japan (No. 11) are in western Europe, where virtually every nation boasts some form of universal health coverage.

Rank Country Rank Country
1 Andorra 11 Japan
2 Iceland 12 Italy
3 Switzerland 13 Ireland
4 Sweden 14 Austria
5 Norway 15 France
6 Australia 16 Belgium
7 Finland 17 Canada
8 Spain 18 Slovenia
9 Netherlands 19 Greece
10 Luxembourg 20 Germany
The United States – where a Republican Congress wants to peel back reforms that gave millions of people access to health insurance for the first time – ranked below Britain, which placed 30th.

The Healthcare Access and Quality Index, based on death rates for 32 diseases that can be avoided or effectively treated with proper medical care, also tracked progress in each nation compared to the benchmark year of 1990.

Virtually all countries improved over that period, but many – especially in Africa and Oceania – fell further behind others in providing basic care for their citizens.

With the exceptions of Afghanistan, Haiti and Yemen, the 30 countries at the bottom of the ranking were all in sub-Saharan Africa, with the Central African Republic suffering the worst standards of all.

"Despite improvements in healthcare quality and access over 25 years, inequality between the best and worst performing countries has grown," said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and leader of a consortium of hundreds of contributing experts.

A warning sign

Furthermore, he added in a statement, the standard of primary care was lower in many nations than expected given levels of wealth and development.

The biggest underachievers in Asia included Indonesia, the Philippines, India and tiny Brunei, while in Africa it was Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho that had the most room for improvement. Regions with healthcare systems under performing relative to wealth included Oceania, the Caribbean and Central Asia.

Among rich nations, the worst offender in this category was the United States, which tops the world in per capita healthcare expenditure by some measures.

Within Europe, Britain ranked well below expected levels.

"The UK does well in some areas, including cerebrovascular disease," noted co-author Marin McKee, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "But it lags behind in outcomes of some cancers."

The gap between actual and expected rating widened over the last quarter century in 62 of the 195 nations examined.

"Overall, our results are a warning sign that heightened healthcare access and quality is not an inevitable product of increased development," Murray said.

Between 1990 and 2015, countries that made the biggest improvements in delivering healthcare included South Korea, Turkey, Peru, China and the Maldives.

The 32 diseases for which death rates were tracked included tuberculosis and other respiratory infections; illnesses that can be prevented with vaccines (diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and measles); several forms of treatable cancer and heart disease; and maternal or neonatal disorders.


Which countries have the best healthcare?

 

I would say a lot of both, The thing is it is not just in the Philippines it is a worrying Factor to WHO (World Health organisation) in that Understaffing creates a % drop of Nursing/medical personnel to patient ratio and in turn will give poorer Quality of Car to the Patient. Way back in the 60's when my First Wife was a Student Nurse, this was the Biggest gripe of the Health Authorities & the Hospitals they oversaw. It is not a new thing as with many problems in the World but For me, it one issue that should be Addressed more actively than it is. Likely the Government Hospitals may progress on this but in the Private Sector I can't see much Change in the near Future. Peso versus People Guess what wins
It is very easy for us to point a finger at any given thing but those of us that used Tools know you can only be as good as those Tools you use, Making a makeshift job with Bad tools is just never going to work.

As I saw recently at SUMC table thumping by a Local got him nowhere and of course it will not get anyone else anywhere, We really must just go with Flow. However, at some Ridiculous Figure for my MIL in ICU per day, we (My wife and I) made sure that we got what we were paying For and that meant a Nurse Watcher very regularly ( as it was chargeable but never seemed to happen when we arrived each day) I asked why are you not here when we arrive, OH! Cos I was delivering Food. Now that is an Area they could be looking at. Trained Nurses doing an Ancillary task? OK in an emergency situation But Some (Most?) Hospitals all over the Word do not to me, know how to Fully Utilize/Optimize the resources they have to hand albeit limited at times.

JMHO

 

I think it is a bit of both, when you have many people lining up waiting their turn then to slipstream operations, you employ more people to deal with them, and if tools of the trade are needed to do so then so be it, buy the tools so the workers can use them to service the customers waiting at the door... The Philippines HAS AN OVER SUPPLY of young Nurses and Doctors waiting for placements here or abroad, USE THEM instead of spending a Billion Dollars building Bridges or USELESS underground Car Parks!

 

We, on this forum, often blame the electric company when they cannot keep up with the demand for electricity. We often blame the city when the roads cannot keep up with the ever increasing amount of vehicles and people. We tend to blame the ISP when they cannot keep up with the ever increasing demands for bandwidth.

Why would we not blame the hospital for failing to keep up with the increasing demands from a growing population?

Are any of these blame games helpful? Probably not but I read a lot of it on forums and hear about it in the coffee shops. The amazing thing is that there is still enough municipal water for the growing throngs of people moving to Dumaguete and surrounding area.

 

I managed to find the X-Rays of my leg (Attached below) You can see how close the break is to my hip joint, when I had the steel plate in all of the screws came loose because of so little bone to attach the top of the plate, which cause the plate to slap against the bone and made the infection worse by allowing it to get between the metal plate and the bone stopping healing.

Now what has happened; the bone that runs from my Hip joint has pushed upwards shortening my leg by 6 inches, and the bone that comes from my knee joint has formed a ball on the end from constant rubbing against the top bone, which has then partially formed over the ball, creating another joint that rotates and pushed upwards as I walk.
In the words of the original Doctor who took these X-Rays in 2009 and called out for his colleagues to come look at the X-Rays; "F***! Wanna see a guy with THREE Hip Joints?"

I have sought advice from many Doctors and Hospitals regards replacing my hip joint with an artificial one and all say the same thing, due to the complications with the original steel plate my body will most likely reject an artificial joint leaving me in a worse predicament than I already find myself in, so better the devil you know than the alternative...

I TRY to be positive... I died 4 times during the operation that stopped my heart before I 'came back' and I realise I should not be here, I am lucky to be here, I AM BLESSED TO BE HERE! I should have died when I had my accident which was a head-on crash of a combined speed of 180kph (Bike accident; the 1st in 8 years of riding) where the car ended up running me over, breaking my right arm above the elbow, my right wrist, my right leg and hip and crushed my pelvis bone from hip to hip (where the Dr said I had in excess of 89 fractures to the bone.)

I do have bad days more than good but I have a much different outlook on life nowadays and realise what is and what is not important and try to stay focused on that. It really annoys me to see people who could work and support themselves and their family yet are too lazy to do so, I worked for around 10 years after my accident at various shops to help support my wife and kids before the pain became too much for me, but even a bad day can be a good day if you look at what is really important in your life.

In Oz I use to spend around $75.00 per fortnight (approx. 2760php) and now I am down to under 1000php per month! If I was still in Oz it would be higher as the Doc wanted to give me that Rat Poison stuff to thin the blood and stop clotting due to the Hemochromotosis producing too much Iron in my blood, with the high red cell count I was at level 488 when I came here and the Doc at SUMC has now told me I am down to 144 where-as 150 is normal levels. The ONLY advice I ever got in Oz was that eventually the Hemochromotosis would "kill me one day". Here at SUMC the Dr explained to me FULLY what was happening to me, and what I needed to do to try and improve my situation, which WORKED! So; WHY couldn't my TWO Dr's back in Oz do the same thing?? I am SURE I AM in the right place now!

 

According to the Doctors in Oz; "NO"... I have since spoken to many others at the fracture clinics who are much worse off than I am with bones completely missing, removed due to infection or from the rejection of a foreign body (steel plate/joint etc) I am not an isolated case by far. if people really knew how much hospitals screw up in the West they would most likely be not so worried about the Hospitals here in the Philippines. MANY Westerners actually come to SE Asia to seek out medical procedures deemed to be cheaper and safer than back home. When your time is up it is up, enjoy the trip!