Private Healthcare Through the Lens of Mental Health
HALIFAX – It’s been nearly a month since a private healthcare clinic opened its doors in Halifax, reigniting discussions about a shift toward a two-tiered system in Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, most mental health clinics in the province have been operating as private businesses all along.
Dr. Simon Sherry is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University. He is also the owner and operator of CRUX Psychology, a private mental health clinic in Atlantic Canada and Alberta.
He spoke about the benefits that being a private healthcare provider affords him and his patients.
Private perspective
“I enjoy that it is a profession wherein you eat what you kill. If you work harder and longer, there are more rewards available,” said Sherry. “You can work as little or as much as you might like and that autonomy and self-control is important to buffering against burnout.”
Sherry said being to set his own hours and decide how much or how little he wants to work allows him to perform his job at a higher level, and ultimately provide better care to his patients. He said psychology is a difficult profession but that having control over his schedule allows him to better take care of his own mental health.
But what about his patients?
Sherry acknowledged that private healthcare excludes people who can’t afford its services. But he pointed out the benefits of private healthcare in terms of its ability to customize treatment for patients. That’s something he says is more difficult within public health systems.
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“I think private practice allows you to custom-tailor an intervention or an assessment to your client’s needs. I think that private practice also tends to involve shorter wait times as compared to our public system,” said Sherry.
“I always enjoy going to my dentist. I don’t have to wait. It’s efficient, and I am well treated.”
The case for public healthcare
Alec Stratford is the executive director and registrar for the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers. He and his team have been fighting to make mental health services more accessible to the public. He says it would be devastating for other healthcare sectors to go down the path of privatization.
“We know that public systems are generally safer, as they are focused predominantly on risk and quality care, not on making profit,” said Stratford.
He says the increase in private healthcare practices is the result of a problem that was created by underfunding the public system. He believes there needs to be a priority placed on making public healthcare more accessible and efficient in order to eliminate people’s desire for private healthcare.
“The premise is, ‘how do we ensure that the quality of health care is available to all Nova Scotians?’ and that is done through a remodeling of our public system,” said Stratford.
One of Stratford’s colleagues at N.S.C.S.W. is Naj Siritsky. Siritsky is working with Stratford to stop the spread of private healthcare in Nova Scotia and increase the amount of public mental healthcare services the province offers.
They said the current model of privatized mental health services is dangerous for patients who are seeking treatment.
“Private healthcare has the potential to cause severe harm to patients, and staff for that matter, because it is not regulated in such a way that there’s transparency and accountability to the public,” said Siritsky. “I would say that privatization has the potential to let profit guide decisions that ought to be governed by health policy and public health research.”
A dangerous business
Siritsky has first-hand experience with what living in a private healthcare system looks like. As the former vice president of several American hospitals, Siritsky saw the negative impacts that the system has on patients.
“I have watched people become homeless because they tried to access medical care… I have personally buried people who had treatable disease and did not get access to medical care,” said Siritsky.
Both Stratford and Siritsky pointed out that the World Health Organization recommends governments dedicate 10 percent of their healthcare spending to mental health. However, in Nova Scotia the number is closer to six percent. They said that the roughly $330 million dollars that increasing that number to 10 percent would create, could be invested in making public mental health services more widely available to Nova Scotians in need.
As the cost of living in Nova Scotia rises, Siritsky says it is critical that healthcare does not become an added expense.
“If people can barely afford to pay rent, or heat their home, or buy food, why on earth would they be able to pay for mental health counseling?” said Siritsky. “This so-called Band-Aid approach, or the two-tiered system, is only going to cause more problems in the long run.”
Joe Thomson is a Huddle student intern, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected]