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With many years of experience working their way through the convoluted system, local healthcare experts Michael Decter and Francesca Grosso have put their combined knowledge to good use, authoring a book to help a layperson find better, quicker care.

Navigating Canada's Health Care - A User Guide to Getting the Care You Need takes a critical look at the system, from giving birth to senior care.

Decter is a former deputy minister of health and founding chair of the Health Council of Canada, while Grosso also helped to establish the health council and served as a non-partisan senior policy advisor and director of policy to former minister of health Tony Clement. The pair decided to put their insider knowledge to paper when they realized that they were both faced with the same questions.

"We would both get called by friends and family and asked where to go in the system to get specific care they needed," Decter said. "People feel the system is so confusing and so complex, they're not sure where to go. The book is a way of answering those questions and helping people know as much as they can in order to take control of their care."

The book looks at a daunting healthcare system in easy-to-understand terms, with simple tips to ensure that people can get medical treatment that is not only top-quality, but also expedient.

"There are little things that people don't know," Decter said. "For instance, if you're referred to a specialist or are going in for a specific procedure where there might be a long wait time, always let them know if you're available on short notice. If there's a cancellation, they can call you up and that will speed up your journey."

Decter, who lives in the Yonge Street and Summerhill Avenue area, said that understanding the healthcare system is particularly important for seniors, who often have more contact with providers than younger people.

"There's a lot more involved in terms of the complexity of the care," he said. "Someone going in to get a simple antibiotic is one thing, but it's something entirely different if you're looking at a long-term care situation."

Grosso, who lives near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, said that people often wrongly assume that the healthcare system is seamless, and that more people need to keep their own patient records, a fact reinforced in the book.

"If you go to the emergency room and you don't know your doctor's address, you don't know if those records will ever get there," she said. "If you keep a file folder of your own records, when you go to your next healthcare provider, you have a record of all the really important things they need to know. The medical care may be very good in Canada, but the linkages are lousy."

The book also has information on tax claims that people might otherwise not think to include. Anything from prosthetics to special foods can be claimed, provided a person has the necessary medical documentation to back their claims.

"People are leaving millions on the table because they just expect an accountant to figure it out," Grosso said. "An accountant doesn't know your medical history."

The authors are already collecting patient stories on their website, www.navigatingcanadashealthcare.ca, in preparation for a follow-up. Navigating Canada's Health Care is available at major bookstores.