The New Brunswick Health Council’s first quarterly report on the province’s health plan shows that only four of the 33 action items haven’t been addressed yet.
The health plan was released in November 2021.
“We see (the province has) completed four and they’re in progress on 23 (action items) … I think given the pandemic context of this past year that’s quite reasonable,” NBHC CEO Stéphane Robichaud told Global News in an interview Tuesday.
He said that while New Brunswick had one of the highest proportions of citizens with a primary care physician, one of the province’s greatest challenges lies in how long it takes to access that care.
“Currently it’s a bit of a free-for-all. Family doctors decide how they wish to practice. What type of incentives do we need so we change those environments?” he asked.
He is advocating for a team-based approach where patients see a different health-care worker for different issues rather than seeing their family doctor as a first point of contact each time.
The NB Health Link program operates using a similar model, where those on the wait list for a family doctor see a rotating group of health-care workers.
While he said new initiatives like NB Health Link and eVisitNB, a virtual after-hours clinic, have had a positive impact, he warns against asking general practitioners to split their time.
“We may not be managing (general practitioners) in the right way. We need to ensure that these types of initiatives are not taking a family doctor’s time away from (their) practice with (their) current patients to participate in these other initiatives. It is a challenge we’ve had in the past,” he said.
When asked whether the provincial government was concerned about spreading doctors too thin, Health Minister Bruce Fitch told Global News that physicians had brought up concerns of burnout across the spectrum of health-care workers.
“We continue to monitor it, whether it’s eVisit or Health Link, any of the new initiatives to provide health care to people,” he said.
Almost 40 per cent of the deliverables on the health-care plan have revised target dates pushing them back a year.
“There are many, many pieces to this puzzle,” Fitch said when asked about the date changes.
“It’s about continuous improvement. As one completes we’ll continue to move on to another,” he said.