Like the time my daughter fell out of a tree and impaled her finger with a stick. When she had an asthma attack. When my son broke his finger. When he tore a ligament during a footy game.
But now, seven years after I ditched the private cover I find myself at the mercy of a beleaguered public health system that lacks the ability to treat my child in any sort of acceptable timeframe.
Our crumbling public health system is an issue former Perth Wildcats coach Scott Morrison knows too well.
He recently revealed his son Max was diagnosed with autism and has since returned to Canada with his family — and the inability to access help in WA drove his decision to resign.
Their experience highlighted the problems within the WA health system, and the problems aren’t just reflected in the rising wait times for elective surgery. They start from the moment your GP hands you a referral to see a specialist, the so-called “hidden wait’ to even see a specialist.
In Morrison’s case he discovered the wait list to see a speech pathologist, paediatrician and psychologist to receive an autism diagnosis for his son extended beyond a year. It took just a month for his son to be diagnosed with autism in Canada.
So here I find myself, scrummaging around for a spare $5000 to pay for my child to see a private ENT specialist for surgery because wait times have ballooned out at Perth Children’s Hospital and nearly every other public hospital in the metropolitan area. The fact they are nearly 16 also means PCH won’t even put them on the books because by the time they made it to the front of the queue they’d be too old to be treated at the children’s hospital.
One of the worst bottlenecks for elective surgery in public hospitals across Perth is for ear, nose and throat surgery. The median wait time at PCH is 369 days. That means 50 per cent of people get seen sooner, 50 per cent wait longer. Some a lot longer.
Go the private route, you wait a matter of weeks.
And your address matters when it comes to how soon you can access certain surgeries because the public hospital nearest to you is usually the one you’ll be referred to.
So while some people think about the school catchment area when they purchase a home, it also comes into play when it comes to the public health system.
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Unfortunately, my postcode is in the catchment area for a public hospital that has some of the longest waiting times for elective surgery. Hopefully none of us will need cardiothoracic, neurosurgery or orthopaedic surgery any time soon.
So despite four interest rate rises hitting the household budget and raging inflation I’m making room in my budget once again for private hospital cover so I’m no longer held hostage by the struggling public system.
Source: SMH
