However, Suzanne Johnston, co-chair of the health plan implementation working group, told reporters Wednesday that there are other options as New Brunswick works to expand patients’ access to care. “How do we get the message across that there is more than one way to access care and more than one way to support each other in it,” Johnston said of the working group’s goal. When the county announced its health plan, about 40,000 people were on the Patient Connect New Brunswick list. Health Secretary Dorothy Shephard unveiled the plan a month after it lost a previously announced target. In April 2021, she said her goal was to give every New Brunswick a primary caregiver within six months. The need for goals and speed of implementation was part of the health plan, which promised that by the second quarter of 2022-23, the waiting list would have been eliminated and replaced by the New Brunswick Primary Care Network. With the network, anyone without a family doctor or nurse will be able to access one in a timely manner while waiting for a long-term placement. Asked how close the county is to achieving this goal, Johnston cited waiting list numbers – 11,000 have been added to the list since February – and suggested that while everyone on the waiting list may not have their own doctor, have better access to care. As of February, when the waiting list was 55,000, about 3,000 people were referred to doctors, which means that there was a net gain of 8,000 people on the list. Johnston said part of the increase is likely related to people who have moved to the county recently. At the moment, the task force’s work is focused on short-term stabilization and medium- and long-term thinking, he said. In the short term, for example, greater access to care is provided through eVisitNB appointments and referrals through 811. Gérard Richard, co-chair of the health plan implementation working group, said work was being done to create key performance indicators so the team would know if the plan needed to be adapted. “It’s not enough to just talk about a plan. … We must have goals.
Community connection
Working Group members said they had spent much of their time since November, meeting with community and healthcare leaders and learning about problems, possible solutions and changes in some areas that are already producing results. “We listen to communities in particular to see how we can educate about the five pillars of the health plan,” Richard said. The pillars are: access to primary care, access to surgery, support for the elderly and access to dependencies and mental health care.
The human resources side
Johnston said a tough decision that comes with implementing a health plan is deciding what jobs health professionals can retain and what jobs they can transfer to the community. “When we are in the community and working in community-based environments, it has to do with who the other people in the communities are who can do things,” he said. Use wallless nursing homes as an example. It is an elderly care strategy that helps seniors live in their own home instead of nursing homes. The people who work with this program are not nurses or doctors, according to Johnston. “They are people of the community,” he said. “They are ordinary people who take care of their neighbors.”
Conservation and recruitment
Johnston said a team of human resources is working to implement changes in the recruitment and retention of doctors, nurses and health care workers. He did not provide details, but said efforts would be made to improve workplace culture to help retain employees. One strategy to increase recruitment involves working with other ministries that have experience in recruitment, he said. A control panel will be released this week where the public can watch along with the implementation of the health plan. It will include a deeper look at recruitment and retention, Johnston said.
‘Is it in crisis?’
Johnston said examining emergency care can be helpful in deciding if the health care system is in crisis. “When we have people who could be seen in another environment, … we would like these people to seek care there,” he said. “Right now, the default button goes to the emergency room because we do not have this other system in operation.” Once professionals are used to the fullest and integrated community care is implemented, Johnston said there will be more flow into the healthcare system. He said that when Medicare was invented, it was not intended for people with many complex medical health problems. “It’s a different world,” Johnston said. “We need to think differently about the system. How do we bring innovation, how do we bring new thinking to our work?”
