Former Vitalité CEO says new health plan doesn't address persistent ER troubles

The former Vitalité Health Network CEO says new health plan unveiled Wednesday is not directly addressing the ongoing emergency-service fragility and closures.

"These breaches of service and temporary closures are going to continue happening and there's not very much in the plan that addresses that," Gilles Lanteigne told Information Morning Moncton.

The plan promises new tools and targets to improve the system in New Brunswick, but includes no sweeping changes or hospital closures.

Health Minister Dorothy Shephard promises the plan will reduce surgical wait times by half by the fall of 2023. The plan also includes using online consultation so people can access primary health care while they wait to be matched with a permanent primary-care provider.

The plan also focuses on helping seniors stay in their homes longer and streamlining the discharge process so they're not in hospital for too many days.

Lanteigne said the minister should be applauded for continuing the effort to fix the problems with the health-care system, but a lot of the programs included in the plan are ones that have been in use in the past years. 

In recent years, the hours at the Sackville Memorial Hospital have been reduced. Ambulances have been diverted from the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton to another hospital in the city because of a lack of staff. The obstetrics and ICU services in Campbellton Regional Hospital have also been inaccessible to area residents for weeks on end. 

Lanteigne said this is a challenging problem that he doesn't see addressed in the plan.

"This is the province that we have approximately three-quarters of a million people, we have rural, we have urban, we have language specificity that we need to respect.

"[The plan] is for five years, but we're only seeing two years. … Year three, four and five are not really fleshed out. And those are the ones that will possibly have an impact on the population and the quality of care and the accessibility of care."

Incremental change is key, Shephard says

Shephard said she's convinced an incremental change in the system would be more beneficial than drastic hospital closures.

"With all due respect, we have a $2.9 billion budget and we know that's going to increase anywhere from four to five per cent," she said. 

"Doing better doesn't necessarily mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater. All of the plans before me have come at this from a top-down approach. I believe we can work with community and ensure that we're meeting the community needs and they'll help us understand what we can do if we have to move things around."

Shephard said the biggest question since the plan was released has been whether the province has the people to implement the plan and address chronic staffing issues.

She said recruiting efforts are continuing, and this plan will hopefully help all practitioners, from doctors, students to message therapists, to "work to full scope."

She agreed new ideas are needed but said the system currently isn't connecting with current practitioners and students very well. She said the solution has to start with using the practitioners more efficiently first.

"I don't even think we're talking to people very well right now," she said.

When asked if this will result in burnout within staff, especially family doctors, she said: "It's little known that New Brunswick has more family doctors per capita than almost any other place in Canada. I think we're second."

She said when it comes to finding doctors for the primary-care network, "this is very doable."

"We haven't gone into this blindly. And yes, there are recruitment that will have to happen. That's why this is a buildup," she said of staffing nursing homes as well.