The government has been talking about reducing bureaucracy and allowing greater sharing between organizations so that parents of children with disabilities don't have to spend as much time dealing with paperwork and ensuring that each professional is kept up to date.
The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and the Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre have announced plans to amalgamate.
CHEO president, Alex Munter, promises "We're going to make information easier to share between health professionals, care plans easier, wait times shorter, fewer assessments and quicker treatments."
While I applaud the goal, I'm concerned about how they plan to achieve this. From what I've been told by parents, OCTC is currently directing their intakes to private clinics, as the delay in getting diagnosed can potentially mean a child will age out of the system without receiving treatment (2 years to diagnosis, 2 years to treatment, treatment cut off at age 5, the math is simple).
Previously, when seeking to cut down waitlists, the solution has been to deny services, not increase them to match the actual need in the community.
Maybe they have a better plan in place this time, but I'm not optimistic. If there had been a budget increase, I'm betting it would have been included. And despite the claims, the problem is not bureaucratic inefficiency (although that does exist). The problem is that too many people need these services and there are too few providers being offered by the government.
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