The New Brunswick Health Council (NBHC) has given the province’s health system an overall grade of C, saying elements of primary health and long-term care are responsible for lowering the grade.
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NSHC CEO Stéphane Robichaud told Global News since its Health System Report Card began, more indicators have been added to give them a better scope of what works and what needs improvement.
“We know our system performs fairly well when it comes to acute care, in-hospital care,” Robichaud said. “What’s bringing our grade down a bit is our performance at the primary health care level, first points of contact, accessibility at that level.”
Both primary health and supportive and specialty care received D grades.
Robichaud said the performance of the province’s health system varies depending where you go, but there is no particular region that does better than another.
“We rather have these little pockets of, depending on what you’re looking at, we have in our system some parts of the province that can be doing very well in that area, while in other parts they’re not doing well at all,” Robichaud said.
The low grade in primary care is something New Brunswick Health Minister Victor Boudreau said needs more focus, which the provincial government has tried to do.
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“It points to the need to do more in primary care,” Boudreau told reporters Tuesday.
He said initiatives in community-based primary care are an ongoing process for the government, including initiatives with midwives, pharmacists and nurse practicioners.
The reports started about six years ago. Robichaud said the information on health services was not readily available and through the report card, more work can be done to improve the province’s healthcare system.
“Organizing this information in this way has helped the system in providing an initial picture of potential areas for priority but also potential indicators to use as a basis for setting targets, performance targets for example,” Robichaud said.
This year the Health Council also reported overall zone performance grades, which Robichaud said can help further improve the system.
“What we’ve noticed is the more local the information is the more impact it has in driving change or improvement,” Robichaud said.
– With files from Jeremy Keefe, Global News
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