New Brunswick health officials optimistic with Ottawa's health-care offer

With more than just funding on the table from the federal government, health officials in New Brunswick say they are optimistic about what comes next.

“What we’re happy to see, and we’ll see how the next years roll out, is this increased [empathy] on results for citizens,” said Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the New Brunswick Health Council.

Adding, “It’s not just about increasing funding, it’s not just about saying, 'The system is under pressure we’ll increase the money.' There’s a lot of talk about saying, ‘We need to specify what we will get in return.’”

He says what’s positive is this round of discussion from government brought a bigger focus on what results will come from the proposed money, instead of just focusing on the funding itself.

“There’s more talk in this round about saying, ‘How are we actually going to measure results from these investments?’ And I think it’s a sign of the times too, that people want to know if we’re going to invest more, what are we going to get in return,” he said.

He adds that New Brunswick already has a provincial health-care plan in place that can serve as a backdrop.

“The health plan already identifies primary care, needing to improve timely access, ensuring we deal with all these people that don’t have a primary care provider, surgical wait times is identified in there so making sure that we’re clear as to what the current baselines are and what are we aiming from an improvement perspective,” he said.

Meanwhile, the New Brunswick Medical Society is also calling the plan encouraging.

“It’s the first step for us to maybe change the way we work and make it better for our patients,” said president Dr. Michèle Michaud.

She points out three major areas that need immediate attention: primary care, recruitment, retention and human resource strategies and modernization of technology.

“It’s all linked together, right? So if we have a better collaborative teams, we’ll have better health environments for workers and if we want to have collaborative teams we need to have technology that can actually transport information from one place to another with the patient,” she said.

With a proposal now in place, Michaud says there’s no more time to wait.

“We need to get on with the work right now because the crisis is there and it’s not going to be solved tomorrow morning, but we need to get to work and have things done as fast as possible for our patients,” she said.

Even with the government’s offer very fresh, officials with both the medical society and the health council say they’re hopeful.

“I think we’re at a point where the external pressure’s now are forcing our hands,” said Robichaud. “We had a tour of consultation two years ago, primary care providers, family doctors, for example, in general, are very, very upfront in saying the current model is not working, it’s not sustainable so we have to find a new reality and work towards that.”