The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

9 | O akville B eaver | T hursday,June 20,2019 insidehalton.com AIRE ONE MADNEss sAlEAIRE ONE MADNEss sAlE $700 OFF HI-EFFICIENCY CENTRAL AIR *Call for Details $1990$1990 *Startingfrom 10 Year Factory Warranty $29 /MTH OAC* FURNACE OR CENTRAL AIR DIAGNOSTIC SPECIAL FaSt & Reliable SeRviCe $49$49 * *Call for details HIgH EFFICIENCY FURNACE & CENTRAL AIR PACKAGE INCLUDES: • 95.5% High Efficiency Gas Furnace • High Efficiency Central Air R410A Refrigerant • 10 Year Factory Warranty $3990$3990 *StartingFrom Heating & Cooling Over 120,000 satisfied custOmers 9 Locations to serve you better www.aireone.com OAKVILLE 905-849-4998 1-888-827-2665 95.5%EFF. ONLY OR /mth$59OAC* RECEIvE UP tO $2,765 IN mANUFACtURER & GAS COmPANY REbAtES* *Call for Details J.M.C Concrete Interlocking LTD Oakville's Favourite Patios & Driveways! DIAMONDDIAMOND DIAMONDDIAMOND LIKE US ONAsk for John www.jmcconcrete.ca 905-878-8595 • stamped concrete • interlocking • exposed aggregate • flagstone • french curbs • retainingwalls • garage floors • free estimates Pud bySteveNease ANIMAL TALES Benjamin Lavieu captured this Baltimore oriole in his Oakville backyard in late May. Benjamin Lavieu photo Patients often ask me what "wait times" are. "Wait time" is an unfortu- nately benign term for a big problem. Some patients wait months for a surgical consultation and years for the surgery itself. Some have waited years to get a family doctor. In fact, Ca- nadians wait longer, com- pared with other countries. At the end of the day, wait times mean someone isn't getting the treatment they need when they need it. Consider the reasons why you go to the doctor's office. Waiting for health care is not like standing in line at the grocery store. Patients waiting for a fami- ly doctor or a specialist are often in distress - stress, pain, uncertainty, suffer- ing, disability. Waiting can be life-alter- ing. Patients miss work. Miss family obligations. Miss community events. Some patients even die while waiting. Patients on a wait-list don't function at their best. The cost in lost productivi- ty alone was estimated at $2.1 billion in 2018. Access to a wait-list is not access to health care, to paraphrase a 2005 Su- preme Court ruling. De- spite that ruling, wait-lists are common. Thirty per cent of Canadians wait for medically necessary care. And while it may be OK to wait for certain conditions for a short while, our wait- lists have only grown lon- ger and now number in months to years. Despite that, one in five specialists are unable to find work. One in 13 Ontarians do not have a family doctor. And 31 medical students were unable to get placements after graduation, unable to take the final step to be- coming a doctor. Wait times are a com- plex issue that has to do with how the health-care system is planned, man- aged and funded. There is a straight line between the health care you see today and the decisions the gov- ernment made over the past decade. Underfunded hospitals. Disorganized and siloed community services. Lack of integration between in- patient and outpatient care. Physician unemploy- ment and underemploy- ment. Right now, one in six Ontarians are seniors. By 2040, it will be one in four. As our population grows and gets older, health-care needs increase. Over the past decade, patient visits increased for MRIs and CTs, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, general sur- geons, and so on. Even though doctors work more, wait-lists continue to grow. The solution? Creating more resources when our provincial government is in deep debt is tough. But at least the government is making moves toward re- form. Time will tell wheth- er those moves are bold enough. Nadia Alam is a Georgetown physician and past president of the Onta- rio Medical Association. She can be reached at na- dia.alam@oma.org. WAIT TIMES FOR PATIENTS A GROWING PROBLEM OPINION BOLD GOVERNMENT REFORM NEEDED, WRITES NADIA ALAM NADIA ALAM Column