Health report targets $250M in extra costs

New Brunswick spends $250 million more on health care than the national average and should make deep changes to bring that down, according to a sweeping new report.

Health Minister Ted Flemming says he will look at the suggestions for savings, but doesn’t want to rush any decisions.

"I am not going to charge off and start saying this and this and this. I'm going to read the report. I've read the introduction, I've read the summary, I've looked at the data. I'm going to read the report from cover to cover. I'm going to analyze it," he said Thursday.

The government-commissioned report says New Brunswickers stay in hospital far longer than the average Canadian and are hospitalized more often than average.

The study looked at hospitals and what they cost the province to staff and run. It points out that New Brunswick pays almost $160 more per capita to hospitalize people than the Canadian average. It makes several suggested changes that would save $200 million a year by 2017.

• Improve productivity: could save $114.5 million
• Reduce length of hospital stays: could save $43 million
• Reduce use of hospitals: could save $137.9 million

Some health professionals agreed the model needs to change.

Roxanne Tarjan, the executive director of the Nurses Association of New Brunswick, said it's time for a tough conversation about closing hospitals and moving to a community clinic approach.

"When you have more facilities, they need to be staffed every day of the year, 24 hours a day, and that's what's driving the cost," she said.

"Not because we have this overabundance of professionals — we've got infrastructure we have to staff, and we're not using those resources in the best way."

Tarjan said any savings should go into advancing primary health care and community health care.

"This is not innovation. It's happening everywhere across the globe," she said.

"Canada and New Brunswick have to move forward with it and stop having this traditional model that looks at when you're ill, we'll put in hospital and cure you, and we'll do all kinds of diagnostic tests that aren't improving health."

Ros Moore, the chief nursing officer for Scotland, gave the keynote at the annual nursing association meeting this week.

She said her country is investing heavily in getting to a patient before they end up in hospital.

"The brave thing, which is to shift your resources into prevention and anticipatory care, is the way that global systems are going in general," she said. 

Flemming said he would not close anything without having another system in place.

"The issue is not closing a hospital. I firmly believe that the question is what goes on in that hospital," he said.

"We shouldn't be closing anything that is not being replaced by something that is better and more efficient. We may have a hospital in a certain community, and you say 'look, it's just too expensive to do this."

This is the first phase in a three-part study. The next phase will look at creating working groups to find efficiencies on the ground.