"The Waiting Room"

The Waiting Room

Directed by Peter Nicks

81mins

“America's controversial health care system is broken and nowhere is it more evident than in The Waiting Room. This composite 24-hour period at Highland Hospital in Oakland, one of the nation's busiest emergency rooms, offers a raw, 
intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and choices.” 

(http://www.winnipegfilmgroup.com/cinematheque/the_waiting_room.aspx)

Waiting: NOUN: The action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

This is what the patients at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA experience on a delay basis.  People of all walks of life, with different injuries and illnesses came through the doors of Highland Hospital and waited their turn to be seen by the doctors.

The documentary showed what Highland Hospital experiences in a 24-hour period (the film was shot over a five day period and edited).  Many people come to wait in the waiting room to see a doctor because they can’t afford to have or to see a family doctor because they don’t have health insurance.

What made this documentary so touching was that all the interviews took place in the hospital.  Not once where the people speaking taken out of the hospital and sat down in a chair to tell their story.  They just spoke as though the camera wasn’t there.  Each new story that was introduced to show how broken the American Health Care System is, was touching.  There were a couple of moments where I found myself starting to tear up over their stories.

Throughout the documentary, there was no reliance on inserted sound (i.e. mood music) to force added emotion.  It wasn’t needed.  Instead the only sound that could be heard were the natural sounds of the hospital.

With everything go on in the hospital, the various amounts of patients coming in needing to see doctors, it would be hard for anyone to stay positive.  This is not the case for Cynthia Y. Johnson, a Certified Nurse Assistant.  Before a patient would go and see a doctor, they would go and see Cynthia.  Which was probably a good thing.  No matter what came her way, Cynthia was able to put a smile on every ones face with her infectious personality.

Canada vs. United States

“Canada's national health insurance program, often referred to as "Medicare", is designed to ensure that all residents have reasonable access to medically necessary hospital and physician services, on a prepaid basis. Instead of having a single national plan, we have a national program that is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial health insurance plans, all of which share certain common features and basic standards of coverage.” (1)

Canadian citizens are lucky when it comes to healthcare.  Our healthcare is public, the government funds it so we don’t pay many medical bills, and most care is covered.  However we still pay for glasses/contacts, and prescription drugs.

In the United States, as shown in “The Waiting Room”, healthcare is hard to come by.  Not many people are able to afford the coverage and therefore are unable to be treated for their illnesses or injuries.

“More than 47 million people in the United States do not have health insurance and about 9 million of them are children. Over 40 million people a year do not get medical care when they need it, even if insured, because they can’t afford it. More than 8 out of 10 uninsured people are from working families. Thousands of deaths every year are attributed to lack of health insurance.” (2)

As I said, I consider Canadians to be lucky in the since that we don’t have to worry about healthcare the way Americans do.  However, when it comes to the waiting room, we are very similar.  Everyone who arrives at the hospital sits and waits their turn on the ever-rotating list of priority.  Instead of focusing on costs of insurance, maybe it’s time our governments looked at the hospital wait times and find a way to improve that.

(1) http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/medi-assur/index-eng.php

(2) http://www.healthpaconline.net/health-care-issues.htm