Our family has had a number of interactions with the health care systems in Ontario and Quebec over the past month. The quality of care has generally been great, but if phone companies were run like these hospitals, they would be out of business.
Paper records. New ID cards issued each time you go. Long line-ups at each stage. Wait times to even get scheduled. Digital records that can’t be sent electronically because no secure network exists.
I’m not talking about remote areas of the provinces. This is the experience we put up with in major hospitals in Toronto and Montreal.
In some ways, the situation almost reminds me of phone companies, in those days before competition. Except that we had a regulator that made sure that customer service standards were more tolerable.
Talk about an industry that is long overdue for efficiency improvements. What can the telecom industry do to help deliver better health care service at lower cost?
Technorati Tags:
health