i fully agree with euphoric (wait wut?). if you have a real emergency (example, big tasty's kid having a seizure) you will get seen fast. cut your hand off? you won't be waiting, chest pain and your ecg looks like hill and gully? you'll be seen.

cat scratch? mosquito bite? itchy crotch? your ass is waiting, and that's the way it should be and that's what walk in clinics are ment for; however, you can thank these people for occupying the dr's time and hospital facilities, a doctor won't stop mid sentence and go see someone with abdo pain while he's telling you why your cat scratch is itchy.

see what alot of people don't realize is that there's a little something called VITALS that let the trained triage nurses who do this day in and day out see through your bull shit and can also know when shit needs to get real.

Wayne, i'm glad that you're sister got the care she needed, but you're comparing apples to oranges. our healthcare system, while good, won't be accessible like private hospitals in the states.

in america they have huge dedicated hospitals to cancer care. you're talking like 600 bed hospitals specifically for cancer care/treatment. these massive centres are basically built and funded from over-charging private insurance companies available to people who can pay for them. great if you can afford a good health plan or pay for your own private care, however it's un-realistic to expect that from a solely provincial funded health care system.

like anything in life yes, there are ways to bypass the system. i'll share someting, my aunt was diagnosed with a blood cancer with mets to her ribs. another aunt works at scarb grace and she was able to get her diagnostic imaging done right away, it wasn't that we asked for it, it's not fair to other people, but the staff there had put the request in without us knowing. there are ALOT of people who think (and receive) faster and preferred service based on their donations to the hospital(s). my aunt has been from scarb grace, to princess margaret, to NYGH, to sunny brook but after all her treatment and running around the end result is that the cancer is gone hopefully and she's on the path to recovery taking just a maintence pill medication. what i'm getting at is that even tho it's not perfect, the system DOES work.

but back to the topic at hand, people have unreasonable expectations of the emergency department and it was abused way too much. you have grown ass people complaining about wait time, yelling & screaming that they arn't being seen, being dramatic throwing themselves on the floor for attention, when they say that they have a fever yet their temp says a different story; not to mention that you get a fever approx once a year, so they've been through this at least 20 times before, and they haven't even tried to take any advil or tylenol or nyquil to fight this fever.

edit: let's face it, the only way that this is going to change is if they tax more and/or these fucking greedy politicians stop stuffing their own pockets and direct money into proper venues. when it comes to health care, they throw just enough money to keep people quiet then spend the rest on pizza parties and limos to work.