5 tips to stay safe and sound in a hospital

Most people dread going to a hospital, but even if you're indifferent to your upcoming stay, there are inside tips to help you be safe and minimize the stress related to a long visit or surgery.

Often what slows down treatment is simply waiting for a CT scan or MRI to confirm your condition.

• Move to the front of the line by heading south of the border where expensive equipment is more common. It will cost you, but maybe not as much as you think.
• For example, some specialized offices in the States offer services at very reasonable rates. One place ran a full-page ad offering an MRI for $450 and a whole-body scan for $455.
• The clincher: next-day scheduling.

If you are facing major surgery, particularly a complex surgery, choose a hospital that does a booming business in that procedure, advise Michael Decter and Francesca Grosso in Navigating Canada's Health Care: A User Guide to Getting the Care You Need.

• Why? Because in this case, familiarity is likely to breed competence.
• "You don't want to be the only one done that year, that month, or even that week," the authors contend.

• The worst time to check into a hospital for routine tests or elective surgery is the weekend, according to Health Facts, a monthly newsletter put out by the Center for Medical Consumers.
• The problem: hospitals are short-staffed.

How gross is this: the nurse changes the sheets of your roommate who just had his appendix out, then comes right over to work on yours. Did she wash her hands? No.

• In fact, although the primary way to reduce the spread of hospital-borne infections is hand washing, studies find most hospital workers comply with basic hand-washing requirements less than half the time.
• One way to make sure the nurses or doctors do wash their hands before examining you? Ask. One study found when patients checked whether health care workers washed their hands, the workers washed their hands more often and used more soap.

Need a knee replacement, heart surgery or cataract removal? Chances are good that you'll have to wait.

• But how long? Unfortunately, finding out about wait times at any particular institution is still a bit of a slog in Canada. While all provinces now provide some wait time info, how much they provide varies dramatically.
• That said, in its report titled Waiting for Health Care in Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Education list some good sources.