Crisis? What crisis? Just a(nother) ‘new (lack of) direction’ for healthcare

Last week’s “mutual” firing of the province’s deputy health minister shows just how unwilling our premier is to acknowledge our healthcare crisis — let alone do something about it.

Denise Perret

Last week, when Premier Stephen McNeil “mutually” agreed to fire Denise Perret — the deputy minister of health he’d hired just two-and-a-half years ago — he explained it was because “we’re now re-setting and moving in a new direction.”

He did not explain what he was re-setting from or to, or in what new yellow-brick-road direction our healthcare system is now moving.

“There was obviously some changes to the relationship between the department and the health authority,” the premier continued to explain without actually explaining anything. “And we just both agreed that it required a different skill set and we left it at that.”

Whether Ms. Perret agreed is a moot point since her government email was immediately shuttered and automatically re-directed, and she declined to respond to media requests for interviews sent to a non-government account.

Despite the supposed mutuality of their agreement, the province will pay Perret about $215,000, or one year’s salary — funds that, of course, could have been used to hire at least three front-line healthcare workers for a year — in severance just to walk away.

I won’t pretend to know what kind of job Perret did as deputy health minister or whether her mutual firing was justified.

What does trouble me is how vague the premier still is — after a full term-and-a-half as the man in charge — about the sorry state of our public healthcare system and what he intends to do to fix it.

He has done things. The question is: were they the right things? Or even helpful things.

He did — with a stroke of his premier’s pen and with no meaningful consultation — transform nine regional health care authorities into one, ostensibly to save money (it hasn’t) and to improve care. There is scant evidence of that either. In fact, many in the system will tell you the system is now managed more poorly than it was before. At even greater cost.

According to Richard Starr, a former journalist and public policy wonk who has crunched the numbers:

“The bad news is that at $58.27 per capita, Nova Scotia health administration costs are the highest of any province and about 35 per cent above the national average.”

In response to the reality healthcare does represent the biggest — by far — government expense, the premier early on declared never-ending war on those who provide it, demeaning and diminishing healthcare workers in the process, thus exacerbating the shortage of trained professionals eager to work here.

Shortage? Oh, yes, that shortage… The latest official numbers show 51,802 Nova Scotians are looking for a family doctor but designated “not yet placed” — as in they still don’t have one. Others peg the number of people still seeking even higher.

The Liberals’ 2013 campaign platform — the one on which Stephen McNeil first ran and won government, and which is, conveniently, no longer available online — solemnly promised to “ensure a doctor for every Nova Scotian.” (emphasis theirs).

McNeil also — cross-my-heart-and-hope-not-to-get-sick tonight — pledged to “invest in direct services for families in need to eliminate the waitlists.”

We know how that went.

Beyond the lack of family doctors for those who want and need one, there are the wait times for surgeries of all sorts, the over-crowded Halifax emergency rooms and the too-often no-go rural emergency rooms, not to forget the lack of mental health services available to those who need them, not to mention a lack of options like nursing homes and long-term care beds for seniors who end up warehousing at ERs because they have no other place to go.

McNeil did promise to move forward with a much-needed hospital re-development for Halifax, and he has. But he is opting to do so using the discredited private-public-partnership model, which has come under fire from Canadian auditors general and others who know about such things for ultimately costing taxpayers more than they would have paid under a public funding approach.

In fact, the deputy minister who preceded Perret, Dr. Peter Vaughan, even wrote a report before he retired highlighting the “challenges” of P3 hospital projects.

Which brought us to January 2017 and the arrival of  Denise Perret, a lawyer and career Alberta civil servant who had been Alberta Health’s assistant deputy minister of strategic planning and policy development before being plucked for the top job here.

I don’t know what Perret — who was the frequent public face of the health department at legislative committee hearings during her brief tenure — did or didn’t do to earn the ire of her political masters.

I do know her mutual firing won’t solve the many, various and often-intractable problems plaguing our healthcare system.

That’s because the biggest problem in our healthcare system remains the man at the top and his blind unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone deal with, the crisis we face.

Two years ago — after a day of distressingly depressing testimony by doctors at the public accounts committee detailing the daily disasters happening inside the province’s crumbling health care system — Stephen McNeil stood up in the legislature and declared, yet again: “Health care is not in crisis.”

There may have been problems, he acknowledged to reporters later, but his government was dealing with them.

“People are starting to see the changes now,” he said.

Indeed.

That was two years ago.

Now the change we’re seeing is another shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic, another blandly un-reassuring reassurance.

Insists Captain McNeil: “We’re now re-setting and moving in a new direction.”

Be careful of that iceberg called reality.

  1. I agree 100%. Our healthcare or lack thereof, is non existing for most.The horror stories I am reading about make me sick, Mr. McNeil has known for some time (since he is one) the babyboomers were aging and a lot of doctors are retiring. Why would anyone( doctors) want to move here when we are the lowest paid in Canada? Having to go to the ER (if its open) just to have a prescription filled is crazy. It takes anywhere from 5-10 hours to be seen. My husband who died in December was seen at outpatients at least a dozen times. Finally, my Doctor (yes I am one of the fortunate ones) went over his bosses head to get him admitted. Even then after many medication changes the problems continued and they continually gave him physical therapy to prepare to send him home. A week later, they told me he was going to die and he did. I was suffering from major depression and I called the help line and got a voicemail? My friend had a heart attack this passed year and her husband suffers from dementia. They have no doctor. To get medications she has to bring him to the ER and wait for many hours to be seen. Does Stephen McNeil have a doctor? The Healthcare system is broken and someone needs to fix it. All the money going to others sources makes no difference if you are dead!
    Stephan Kimber you are right on!

    Reply

  2. June 6, 2019

    Dear Mr. Kimber:

    I’ve read your article “Crisis? What crisis? Just a(nother) ‘new (lack of) direction’ for healthcare”. Since you are very well-informed regarding the current crisis in long term care, I have contacted you to bring attention to another way government is choosing to deal with this issue. Apparently, there are alternatives to the long-term care crisis. They are using “Seniors Social Housing” aka “Housing Nova Scotia” aka “Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority” as one solution to the problem.

    When I moved to ACADIA NORTH, I assumed it would be operated as an apartment building, not a seniors’ residence. In the 7+ years I’ve been here, I have witnessed many serious incidents (including, but not limited to injuries from falls, threatening behavior, harassment & fire alarms). In my opinion, it is simply because some of the tenants should not be living on their own. Yes, some have home-care workers. But what happens to those needing 24-hour care when the home-care workers leave? I don’t know what the process is when empty apartments are rented, but I am shocked by some of the people who have been approved. I consider this a serious safety risk for all tenants and I’m certain it’s problematic in other buildings.

    Apparently, “Northwood Community Recreation & Wellness” received a grant $$$ in 2016 from the “New Horizons for Seniors Program”. This funding is to be used “to engage with residents in north end MRHA buildings to create and facilitate their own recreation programs.” To my knowledge, our tenants (not residents) have never asked for this. When I attended the meeting in 2018, I was not impressed! Starting a walking group, a book club, doing crafts together, gardening, & checking in on neighbours’ were some of the topics discussed. This sounds a lot like a continuing care facility to me! Free memberships to attend any of Northwood’s programs & events (bingo, bus trips, barbeques) were also offered. Silly me – I have always assumed that tenants in an apartment building venture outside for recreational activities!

    I would like to discuss this with you in more detail. I have more stories to tell – maybe something newsworthy. If you are unable to contact me, perhaps you can suggest someone who can advise me on what, if anything, can be done.

    I look forward to a response. You can reach me at 902-455-5592 or send me an email at carolyn.shelley@eastlink.ca.

    Carolyn Shelley

    Reply

  3. Well Said!

    Reply

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