Watch Critical Condition, a public forum on the state of health care

With Critical Condition — a special series on health care in Newfoundland and Labrador — ​CBC wanted to start a conversation. 

And it definitely has people talking.

You're invited to have your say Thursday evening during a public forum in St. John's, by attending either in person – by arriving by 6 p.m. – or by sharing your comments as its broadcast online and on CBC TV's Here & Now.  

We've already received many comments, concerns and potential solutions for fixing the province's health-care system: people sent them to our email address: [email protected].

Here's a collection of some of the stories and opinions that we've heard via email and social media.

User fees for appointments

"We need to initiate user fees for medical appointments while we still have medicare," a St. John's man argues. 

"With ballooning provincial debts, increasing wait times, extra burden on the system due to aging baby boomers, and less money to go around, how can we possibly see it fixing itself?

"Diabetes and heart disease continue to rise, and this province is far behind the rest of the country with MRI machines, necessary to achieve better surgical outcomes."

Logistical woes in rural areas for scheduled appointments

"My kids were supposed to go out to Goose Bay for eye appointments this week, but we couldn't make our appointments because the schedevac [medical transportation airplane] was not available," writes a mother on the north coast of Labrador. 

"We had appointments on Thursday and Friday, and should have left on Wednesday, but there were high winds, so no flights on Wednesday … We might have still been able to get one appointment, if we had gotten out, but there were three medevacs on Thursday, so no flights available for standard appointments."

The family was unable to reschedule, as the optometrist is now booking for the end of July, according to the woman.

"It is so frustrating when you live somewhere remote, and you finally get an appointment, and then can't make it through no fault of your own, and then are put right back to the bottom of the list."

Trying to make an appointment

A person who needed an MRI for problems following hip surgery was trying to speed up the three-and-a-half-month wait by calling the office where the appointments are made.

"After trying several times to make contact by phone, I eventually went into St. Clare's and presented myself at the MRI reception desk. I explained my situation and said I was hoping to get in on a cancellation.

"They said to do that, I had to phone the appointments office! I said I had already tried that and they told me I would have to keep trying …The receptionist soon realized that I was not going to go away without having made contact with appointments, and she eventually took my MCP card and went and asked," the person recounted to CBC.

"Yes, they could get me in on a cancellation a month earlier. Success! But I shouldn't have had to do that."

The difficulty with getting in

One woman writes that finding a good doctor is a great thing, but it comes with access issues. 

"The difficulty is when you get sick, you often cannot get in for more than a week … When you have a chronic condition such as asthma, waiting that long can mean hospitalization. I have been fortunate this hasn't happened to me, and when really sick, [I] become fairly persistent about getting an appointment," she wrote to CBC. 

"This is a common story and means we obviously need more physicians to reduce hospitalizations and unnecessary deteriorating health."

Long wait for daughter with bipolar disorder

The mother of a young woman with bipolar disorder says it took over a year to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. 

In the meantime, the mother paid out of her own pocket — $150 an hour — for dialectical behaviour therapy, which she says made a significant difference for her daughter.

Why are we running a system that is reactive, not proactive?- Concerned mother 

"Why do our citizens with mental health issues have to be in a crisis where they are at risk of hurting themselves or others before we can offer medical help that will potentially prevent the worst-case scenario in the first place?" she writes.

"Why are we running a system that is reactive, not proactive?"

Join the CBC NL Critical Condition public forum, hosted by Ramona Dearing and Anthony Germain, on May 31 at Memorial University's Bruneau Centre, from 6:30 - 8 p.m. (Please arrive at 6 p.m.)