Health Minister Dorothy Shephard speaks during a COVID-19 briefing on July 15, 2021. (Image: CPAC video capture)
The Higgs government unveiled its long-awaited action plan Wednesday to stabilize and rebuild the health-care system
The 16-page plan, titled Stabilizing Health Care: An Urgent Call to Action, contains more than three dozen priorities to be completed over the next two years.
But there is no mention of hospital or emergency room closures in the document, which prompted the province to backtrack on previous health reforms announced in early 2020.
“The first 24 months are the real focus of what we plan on doing to create the vision for our five-year plan of creating a network of excellence,” Health Minister Dorothy Shephard told reporters during a virtual news conference.
The priorities are grouped into five action areas: access to primary health care; access to surgery; create a connected system; access to addiction and mental health services; and support seniors to age in place.
Plan highlights
The plan promises to eliminate the waitlist for primary care physicians by the second quarter of 2022-23. After that, anyone without a doctor or nurse practitioner will be able to access a family doctor or nurse practitioner while waiting for a longer-term placement.
It also commits to eliminating wait times of more than a year for hip and knee surgeries by late 2022 and reducing surgical wait times by half by late 2023.
One of New Brunswick’s laboratories will be designated as the province’s public health laboratory, ensuring citizens will get more standardized testing and faster results, and all of the province’s laboratories will become part of an “integrated clinical diagnostic laboratory system” with strong transportation links between facilities.
By late 2023, residents will be able to schedule their own diagnostic tests like blood work and x-rays at any place the service they need is available.
Ambulance New Brunswick (ANB) will re-introduce the Emergency Medical Technician profession, which the province says will ensure there are more ambulances on the roads. ANB will also introduce new multi-patient vehicles, allowing them to increase service levels for non-emergency transfers.
Communities and providers will become official partners in recruitment for a variety of roles from physicians and nurses to psychologists and mental health counsellors and additional professional roles. A new grant program will be created to help rural communities in particular develop promotional materials to support the effort.
Addiction and mental health access
Wait times for adult high-priority addiction and mental health services will be improved so that 50 per cent of cases will receive service within 10 days, up from 35 per cent.
Walk-in services will be introduced in the province’s 14 addiction and mental health clinics before the end of the year, and an overdose prevention service will be implemented to help people with substance use disorders.
The mobile crisis unit will be expanded next year to further support citizens experiencing an addiction or mental health crisis, and a new provincial phone service will be implemented to ensure addiction and mental health crisis response services are available 24/7.
Also by late 2022, mental health staff will be working in emergency departments across the province so people experiencing addiction or mental health crisis receive more timely support through an established mental healthcare team and coordinated follow-ups with community services.
Support for seniors
Eleven special care home sites will partner with the Extra-Mural Program to provide enhanced clinical
services to seniors in their homes, including use of technology for routine follow ups.
Long-term care staff will join the discharge teams in at least 10 hospitals to ensure that seniors are
being transitioned back to their homes with appropriate plans for their ongoing care.
An additional 20 special care homes will partner with the Extra-Mural Program to provide enhanced clinical services.
The program Nursing Homes Without Walls, which extends some of the services available in nursing homes to seniors who are still living at home, will be expanded to include 16 additional rural locations.
Shephard said she is confident that the timelines can be met.
“All of the staff here at the department worked with our partners at the RHAs, Extra-Mural/ANB, and they have validated all of our initiatives and the timelines that go with it,” she said.
Staff shortages
The report said New Brunswick must be innovative in several areas over the coming six to 12 months to address the “serious shortages” in health-care workers.
It proposes developing innovative education and clinical training models, shorter training programs combined with experiential learning, and speeding up the recognition of the foreign qualifications of health professionals trained abroad.
The plan also calls on the province to utilize non-traditional providers to give citizens more timely access to services, and reinvigorate the volunteer network in hospitals.
Liberals “disappointed”
With the extensive amount of time spent on developing the health care plan, Official Opposition critic for Health, Jean-Claude D’Amours, is disappointed by the results.
The Liberal party believes the Higgs government is in “panic mode” and released a document with “little information” to relieve pressure.
“We cannot remove the fact that we need health professionals in this province and we cannot say enough that in this report there is nothing that will provide doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners,” D’Amours said in a media availability on Wednesday afternoon.
The absence of a price tag left D’Amours to question the true intentions of the Higgs Government and whether the promise to not include closures can be kept.
Greens have mixed reaction to health plan
Memramcook-Tantramar Green MLA Megan Mitton had a mixed view of the plan.
She wanted to see the province confront the human resources problems which are forcing the Sackville Memorial Hospital to close its emergency room at night beginning this Friday with no end date in sight.
“These are some of the consequences of the lack of bold action that we’ve needed from successive governments,” Mitton said.
As for communities assisting with recruitment, Mitton said the Green party has called for decision-making to be made closer to the places it impacts not just in Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton.
Mitton wanted to see more action from the government on the recruitment and retention of nurses.
She thinks the regional health authorities have dropped the ball on this.
“I have even heard from people who have had trouble navigating the system. We need to make sure people are getting hired on full-time contracts and are being recruited. That hasn’t been happening as much as it needs to,” Mitton said.
Mitton was pleased to see the Nursing Homes Without Walls program will be expanded.
With files from Brad Perry, Robert Lothian, and Tamara Steele.
