More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here. Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care. The waits, in some instances, have had devastating consequences. “There have been very serious health-care problems that have arisen in neurosurgical patients because of the lack of ability to attain timely...
