Minister sees signs of improvement in New Brunswick health-care system

New Brunswick's health minister says there are signs of improvement in the health-care system as he prepares to spend record amounts of money in the coming year.

Bruce Fitch spent Wednesday laying out his budget estimates, an exercise that turned into a detailed parsing of whether dozens of new initiatives are addressing wait times and other problems.

Fitch said ambulance offload delays at the Moncton Hospital have been reduced from a peak of more than 200 minutes per patient last September to about 100 minutes, numbers originally released by Horizon Health in February.

"There's a benchmark that I would like to see that down [to], even cut in half from there," Fitch said.

"You can't let off your foot off the pedal. You can't rest on your laurels when it comes to health care." 

In some cases last year, patients waited up to 40 hours to be transferred from an ambulance to the hospital.

Fitch told a committee of MLAs at the legislature that the new provincial Health Link program, serving people who've been on the waiting list for a family doctor, is also having a "huge, huge" impact.

About 18,000 New Brunswickers using the system have come off the wait list, reducing the likelihood they'll end up at a hospital emergency department for treatment, he said. 

Fitch also said recommendations stemming from a high-profile death at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton last year are being implemented.

The death of that patient, who was in the waiting area of the emergency department, led Premier Blaine Higgs to shuffle Fitch into the health position, fire the CEO of Horizon Health and replace the two partly elected health authority boards with appointed trustees.

Fitch said the new monitoring of people in the waiting area by personal care assistants — a $1.1-million expense in this year's budget — was one recommendation flowing from that incident that is now in effect.

He also said "a number of people" who have shown up at the hospital have been diverted to a primary care clinic in Fredericton's downtown, easing pressure and helping reduce wait times.

Opposition MLAs acknowledged some of the improvements but said New Brunswickers remain apprehensive.

"There might be some reduction in wait times," said Liberal health critic Rob McKee.

"The general feeling from the population is things are not getting better, and they're looking to government to give them an indication that things are getting better."

On offload delays at the Moncton Hospital, Green health critic Megan Mitton said "obviously, 100 minutes is better than 200 minutes, but that is not good enough. We're talking about emergencies."

The long offload delays mean ambulances and paramedics are tied down at hospitals and unable to respond to calls during that time. 

"For them to be waiting is still really scary," she said. 

"That's still an hour and 40 minutes average. … That's really not good enough."

Fitch faced questions about whether all the new federal funding for health care announced last month is going into the system.

Higgs said in February that increases to the Canada Health Transfer would be about $200 million this year.

New Brunswick would also get at least $50 million this year of the $900 million over 10 years as part of a separate bilateral agreement with Ottawa.

On Wednesday, the Health Department said the new federal funding is $140 million this year, and all of it has been allocated in the budget.

A spokesperson said the $200-million figure included increases to transfer payments that were already expected based on the existing funding formula as well as new money.

"The money's being spent. There's no money being left on the table," Fitch said.

Fitch also revealed for the first time in a scrum with reporters that legislation to overhaul the governance of the two regional health authorities will maintain two separate boards of directors.

Two trustees have been running the RHAs since Higgs dissolved their two boards last summer.

The francophone health care lobby group Égalité santé en français argued that was unconstitutional because it violated the right of both anglophones and francophones to govern their own distinct cultural institutions.

Last fall Fitch would not rule out a single board of directors for the two health authorities, but he said Wednesday each would have its own board.

"There are going to be two boards for the RHAs. I'm going to say that," he said.

"I wanted to clarify that because that's a contentious issue, and it's an important issue for the people of the province of New Brunswick." 

He did not say if the new boards would include any elected members like the previous versions did.