QUEBEC CITY – After striking a deal with doctors to roll back their pay increases, Health Minister Gaétan Barrette is now setting out to re-organize the entire health-care system.
Barrette tabled a bill Thursday which aims to abolish regional agencies. More specifically, Barrette is looking to eliminate an entire layer of bureaucracy by abolishing 18 regional agencies and merging some 180 health and social services centres into 28 mega-centres, except for MUHC, CHUM, Ste-Justine Hospital and the Montreal Heart Institute. They will remain independent.
Thirteen-hundred senior manager jobs will be cut. Employees will either retire or be relocated. But Anglophone board members are guaranteed to stay on; Barrette said Anglophone rights are protected by the province’s language charter. “I understand people have an emotional attachment to their institutions,” he said during a press conference.
Moreover, Barrette is convinced streamlining bureaucracy will simplify access to health-care services for all Quebecers.
“We want to seize this opportunity to make what we consider a necessary change in the culture of our network in order to make sure that once and for all, the network will work for the patient,” said Barrette.
The CAQ offered to support the bill.
“We’re willing to move forward with that bill because it’s an idea from my political party,” said CAQ Health Critic Eric Caire.
The PQ worried about too much centralization.
“Gaspésie, Saguenay, Rimouski, they did good work with their agencies,” explained the PQ’s Health Critic, Diane Lamarre. “It’s very far from the patients and it’s a lot of concentration of power to the health minister himself.”
As for the nurses’ union, President Régine Laurent said Thursday she expected more concrete action to improve patient care.
Bill 10 is considered “Phase 1” of Barrette’s proposed health-care reform. The minister is expected to shake things up again in a few weeks when he tables a second bill to allegedly change the way our system is financed.
Comments