FOCUS ON HEALTH CARE

This week Prime Minister Paul Martin and the Premiers are meeting in Ottawa to discuss how to improve health care delivery throughout Canada. I think that everyone is hopeful that there will be an historic agreement that will help governments cope with the increased demands on health care systems. An important prerequisite to any agreement is recognition by the federal government that they must do more than they have been doing. The best single thing that Paul Martin’s Liberals can bring to the table is more funding for the provinces.

Health care is taking up an increasing part of all provincial budgets, and the federal government has a role to play in making sure that the provinces have the resources they need to deliver essential health care services. The provinces must commit to providing first class services for their residents by directing funds to where they will do the most good. The Provincial Liberals are beginning to make a lot of fundamental changes to the health care system, but I do not think that they have fully thought through the effect of their decisions to: delist health care services, impose a new health tax, and introduce Local Health Integration Networks.

Before they were elected, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals made a lot of promises including improving health care delivery. So far, they have failed to deliver on their promises. They are making some fundamental changes, but not providing sufficient transition funding. Recently they announced that Ontario hospitals would be allocated $469.5 million in operating funds. Locally, the Ross Memorial Hospital received just over $6 million dollars, but the strings attached to that money means that only $1.2 million can be allocated towards their base operating funding. This money falls far short of the resources they will need to cover all of their existing programs and services such as diagnostic services, in-patient and laboratory services. The government knew about the hospital’s anticipated deficit o f $3.2 million, and yet they have left the hospital with a shortfall of about $2.1 million dollars. They also have to erase that yearly shortfall and be in a balanced budget position by March 2006. Ross Memorial Hospital has historically been one of the best-run hospitals in the province, and they have already made many of the changes that other institutions are only now considering. This means that the hospital will be faced with making some tough decisions in the weeks and months ahead.

Rural communities across Ontario are coping with the difficult task of living in “underserviced” areas”. Municipalities have had to compete, often with one another, to attract both family physicians and specialists. Nurse Practitioners would help to ease the load of already overworked family physicians, but the announced increases in the number of new nurse practitioners will not even begin to meet the need. The McGuinty Health Care Premium will not bring extra doctors to our communities, and isn’t going to improve service for Ontarians. The Liberals believe that spending your tax dollars on converting existing MRI clinics to government ownership is better health care. They are not adding a single machine, technician or appointment time by doing this. It is a clear example of health care decisions being directed by ideology rather than by common sense.

Some of our communities are reaping the benefits of foreign trained physicians. There needs to be more effort on the part of this government to making it easier for these professionals to practice here. The process of recognizing physicians credentials needs to be streamlined, and we needs to create more spaces in medical schools.

We need to do more to attract and retain nurses, and part of the solution has to be addressing our nursing skills shortage. There are systemic problems in our hospitals and communities that need to be addressed.

Last week, Minister Smitherman announced a new level of bureaucracy that would further complicate our health care system. The new Local Health Integration Networks do not address the primary healthcare needs of urban or rural communities. At the same time that they are delisting coverage for eye exams, physiotherapy and chiropractic services, the McGuinty government has decided health care dollars should be spent on a costly level of bureaucracy. All of this was done without consultation with front-line healthcare workers.

The health care that you and your family receive can mean the difference between life and death. Before they moved ahead with a plan of dubious merits they should have consulted with those people who will be most affected by the changes. Is this really the best way to spend health care dollars? This is not going to help those people who are suffering because of the delisting of services. I am quite skeptical right now, and do not believe that these reforms are going to improve patient care and access, nor will they reduce waiting times.

I have already made my views clear to the government that they need to do more, and that the delisting of services will mean more, not fewer, visits to hospitals. I will continue to make my voice heard on behalf of our community. We deserve the very best. After all, we are paying for it.

All of our communities have local doctor recruitment boards. I want to work with these groups to make our communities attractive destinations for doctors to set up their practices. There have been some successes, but we need more, and we all need to work together to make it happen.