Health-care pledges emerge in lead-up to New Brunswick election campaign's official start

With health care perpetually in the top rung of New Brunswick election issues, commitments are emerging ahead of an official start to this fall’s campaign.

The Liberals have tagged collaborative health-care clinics as its flagship election promise, with a $115-million pledge first announced in August to open 30 community based collaborative care clinics.

Liberal leader Susan Holt said 10 of those clinics would open in the first year of a four-year mandate.

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“What the health-care professionals are telling us, is that this is what they want,” said Holt, to a Saint John Chamber of Commerce luncheon audience on Wednesday. “They don’t want to be in a single-family practice anymore.”

“The thing that frustrates me the most is that there is actually unanimous political support for this… and here we are three years after the first clinic was promised and not a single one open.”

The Progressive Conservatives took aim at the Liberal’s promise this week, posting on social media that there are 51 collaborative health-care centres operating right now, with another six in development.

The centres include nurse practitioner clinics, family medicine practices, and “Health Link” clinics (providing primary care access to patients waiting for a permanent physician). A collaborative team-based approach for patients was a main plank of the province’s primary health care action plan, released by the Blaine Higgs government in May.

Holt dismissed the PC’s tally of 51 collaborative health-care centres operating, with six more to come.

“They’re not delivering the kind of care we’re proposing,” said Holt.

The Liberals have previously said doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, physiotherapists, and pharmacists would all operate together within the same setting.

Green Party leader David Coon spoke in support of Saint John’s approach to collaborative health care, during a presentation to port city councillors Monday night.

“You have a regional director for Horizon Health in Saint John who has set up a system of community health centres, with a core one in the uptown and then satellite ones in the city, that is extraordinarily impressive,” said Coon. “The staff are interchangeable between the different centres, and it seems to be working well.”

Coon said each area of the province should have its own tailored collaborative health care set up.

“(Doctors) wouldn’t be working particularly in health centres, but team-based practices with other health professionals, so you’re not only having to depend on the doctor but you’re a patient of a group of people,” said Coon.

On Monday, Premier Blaine Higgs also spoke to an audience of Saint John Chamber of Commerce members and said “our number one goal in health care is building an information management system that we tie in our entire health network, and that includes Vitalité and Horizon.”

Higgs has often spoken about centralizing services between the two health authorities.

“We no longer can have our two health networks competing with each other. One can be French, and one can be English, and that’s wonderful and they’ll serve in both official languages and that’s the benefit of a bilingual province,” said Higgs. “But we can’t compete with each other and deliver the best health care in our province at the same time.”

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