The cost of waiting: Why some patients go private for faster diagnosis | Canada Voices

Courtney Murphy-Baum knew her body well. So when the avid runner and outdoor enthusiast began feeling unexplained tingling in her legs, she didn’t dismiss it. She suspected something serious: multiple sclerosis (MS).

MS is notoriously difficult to diagnose, as its symptoms often mimic other health conditions. For Murphy-Baum, a woman in her mid-30s living on Vancouver Island, that meant months of uncertainty. When she woke up one day with blurry vision in one eye, she immediately made an appointment with an eye doctor, who diagnosed her with optic neuritis.

“This was kind of devastating for me, because obviously, I’d been doing my own research. I knew the stats that if you get optic neuritis, the stats are very, very high of being diagnosed with MS in the next five to 15 years,” Murphy-Baum says. “But at that point, no one had said [it was] MS because they didn’t want to scare me.”

Her doctor sent out a requisitions for MRI scans, but warned her the wait could be up to a year – a timeline Murphy-Baum found unacceptable.

“I saw that with science today, MS has come a long way [in terms of] disease-modifying therapies and drugs. The sooner you get on them, the better your future health will be with brain functions [and] physical abilities,” says Murphy-Baum. “I didn’t want to wait around a year for [a diagnosis].”

She looked into other options, including travelling to the United States for treatment – but then she found a clinic with a private MRI machine in nearby Nanaimo, B.C. After only 10 days of waiting – and paying $1,500 of her own money – she got the test, receiving an official MS diagnosis two days later.

Last year, private healthcare accounted for 29 per cent of total healthcare spending in Canada, or about $107.88-billion. This usually refers to anything that isn’t covered by the public system, such as dental care, vision care, prescription drugs and elective procedures. But it can also apply to cases like Murphy-Baum’s, where Canadians pay out of pocket to access publicly-covered services that aren’t available quickly enough.

According to the Canadian Medical Association, this is a pervasive problem in Canada. The organization commissioned two surveys in 2023, which found 30 per cent of Canadians could not access healthcare in the preceding 12 months, with the most common reason (42 per cent) being long wait times. While most respondents (63 per cent) believe it’s important to ensure that all Canadians get equal treatment from the country’s healthcare system, just over half (53 per cent) are open to paying for access to health services.

That’s something Connie Jorsvik has seen first-hand. As the founder of Patient Pathways, she helps patients and families in British Columbia navigate serious and complex illnesses, often when the public system falls short. Before launching the service in 2011, she spent 25 years as a registered nurse.

“If they’re willing to pay privately, all it takes is a Google search to find private specialists – but I highly recommend that people really do their homework on who those doctors are, what their credentials are and what their ratings are before they go,” Jorsvik says.

Many Canadians worry that turning to private healthcare could undermine the public system. According to Canadian Doctors for Medicare, a national organization dedicated to preserving Canada’s publicly-funded health care system, the idea that privatization will reduce wait times is a myth.

“Human resources are finite. The same pool of doctors, nurses and other health professionals currently working in the publicly-funded system would be pulled from that system to work in the privately-funded system,” the organization says on its website. “A parallel private system reduces the incentive to work in the publicly-funded system [and] reduced capacity in the publicly-funded system leads to worsening wait times for those who cannot afford to pay privately … A review of international health systems found that increased private financing was associated with reduced accessibility, equity and quality.”

Still, Jorsvik believes that “patients should be allowed to go where they need to go, to get the care that they need.” She notes that someone waiting for a hip replacement might be in extreme pain, unable to work or live and willing to pay whatever they can for relief.

Private care may offer speed, but it’s not without its own potential pitfalls. For example, patients who travel out of province or abroad for treatment should confirm they’ll still have access to follow-up care when they return home.

“If you’re already waiting for a surgeon to see you for six months to a year and that’s the reason you’re [travelling], who is going to take care of you when you come back?” Jorsvik says. “I’ve heard many horror stories of people leaving for surgery, having a problem in that province or other country – such as an infection – and then nobody will see them when they come back [home] because [health care practitioners] won’t handle a problem that they didn’t cause.”

Once patients confirm that a specialist or surgeon will support their care back home, they can start exploring other options, such as private specialists or surgeons out of the province or country. Often, Jorsvik adds, their home specialist or surgeon will have colleagues they can recommend.

But even with referrals, navigating private care requires careful consideration. There is no easy answer for if or when people should pursue it.

“I believe in weighing risk versus benefit in everything in health care. What is the risk for me going out of the province? Not having a doctor when I come back is a risk. [So is] the travel and the cost. And what is the benefit? The benefit would be, I can have the surgery in two weeks instead of waiting two years,” Jorsvik says. “And it’s going to really be dependent on each person whether the risk is worth it.”

For Murphy-Baum, paying for an earlier MRI was absolutely worth the cost. Although she is grateful she was able to find a private clinic through her own research, she does wish her doctors had suggested the idea to her and even let her know there was a private clinic that was close by.

“I’ve been medicated for about six months and I’m feeling so much better – the medications are working really well,” she says. “I’m very lucky that I thought of [going to Nanaimo], but if I didn’t, I would be in a lot worse shape right now.”