President Everton called the meeting to order at 12:15pm at the Concordia Club.
He thanked Greeter Karen Spencer, Sargent at arms Paul Puopolo and Assistant Sargent at arms Andrew Williams
Brandon led us in O’ Canada
Announcements:
- Don Wilcox is celebrating his 87th Birthday this week
- David and Sandy Barth celebrating the 5th wedding anniversary
- Karin V. is seeking more volunteers for the 5 club Sensory garden cleanup this Saturday June 10 at 9:00am at Kidsabilty. Bring your garden gloves and any other garden tools if you can make it.
- Graham G. won the club trivia quiz today correctly answering the year that the Rotarian of the year award started at our club (1995)
- The 50/50 draw was for $278 in the pot. Graham, Brandon and Owen all failed to draw the black marble. The pot continues to grow.
- Mac reminded everyone that next weeks meeting is offsite at the family and children services facility. He will be sending out invitations/registrations this week as they need a head count and any dietary restrictions.
Guest Speaker:
Our own Simon Adler provided Rotarians with an education and comparison of the health/medical systems in Canada versus Israel.
Simon has been spending winters in Israel and reads the National post to keep up with Canadian news while he is away. He noted that there are a lot of articles about our health care system and the delays for elective procedures.
He went on to show us some charts on Child Mortality, Life Expectancy, Maternal Mortality, GDP vs Health care provided etc. His charts showed 4 countries, Israel, Canada, UK and the USA. In most cases Israel and Canada are very similar and top the charts. UK is in the middle and the USA tends to lag behind.
The Israeli system is based on having 4 competitive HMO and every citizen is obligated to join one of them. The HMO cannot turn you down for any reason. He notes that due to this competitive model the customer service is higher and faster as each HMO competes to best service their clients.
He noted that they have a universal medical record system that all the HMO’s use and all citizens can access through the internet via a computer or smartphone. This leads to very efficient processing time and communications between all service providers. Doctors, technicians and patients.
He gave us an example of a recent surgery he was scheduled to have here in Canada and the delays were in months and years just to get an appointment to see a specialist. In Israel he was able to see a specialist within days and all the tests and prep work as well as the surgery was done within weeks.
He notes that Canada could learn from this different way of providing medical services. There was a lively Question and Answer as many Rotarians questioned Simon about the differences between our 2 countries medical services.
Andrew thanked our speaker Simon for his excellent presentation.
The meeting was closed at 1:30pm
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