New Brunswick health-care organizations say new federal funding should be used to address recruitment and retention issues and access to primary care in an effort to stabilize the system.
The federal government has offered the provinces and territories a health funding deal worth $196.1 billion over 10 years, including $46.2 billion in new money. Including already announced bumps to federal transfers, it would mean an additional $229 million for New Brunswick coffers over last year.
The president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union Paula Doucet says some of that money needs to go towards stemming the torrent of staff leaving the system.
“We’ve seen quite a large number of nurses choose to retire, quit or otherwise just go elsewhere to nurse because of the working conditions that they’ve been faced with over a number of years in New Brunswick,” she said.
“What we’re seeing is mid-career and towards end-career nurses just saying ‘I’m done’ and leaving. They’re leaving because the work-life balance is nonexistent right now and they know if they take a travel nurse job, they’re going to go away for four weeks but then they’re coming home and off for four weeks.”
Doucet said the government needs to speak to front-line workers about how to improve working conditions, look at reducing access to some services and introduce pay incentives to keep nurses in the province.
Higgs said he understands that a wage adjustment for many in the health-care system is needed, but says that can’t be the only thing the boost in funding goes towards.
“If this all turned into salary increases, what does that change at the end of the day for service delivery? So I’m hoping we can get a balance of paying the right amount, not get into a competition between other provinces, but pay what’s fair and equitable,” he said.
The province increased its health budget by 6.4 per cent, just shy of $200 million in last year’s budget. Higgs said he wants to ensure key priority areas like community care clinics and mental health and addictions treatment have funding and actionable plans tied to this year’s budget.
Part of the federal government’s proposal involves the signing of bilateral agreements in priority areas like primary care and mental health.
Dr. Michelle Michaud, the president of the New Brunswick Medical Society, says some of that funding should go towards strengthening community and collaborative care models.
In particular, she wants to see funding for allied health professionals, like physician assistants and nurses, to help take the burden off of those already working in community care practices.
Michaud is a family physician in Edmundston and says she knows first hand what having the help of a nurse just once a week has made in her own practice.
“I get to have a lot of assistance to see more patients in a day, she can see my chronic patients … she can also see patients for me if I’m not in my office that day,” she said. “It actually saves us time and at the end of the day we actually can leave the office and go see our families and don’t have to be spending the night doing paperwork and charts, which is the reality of physicians in community practices.”
“It’s one of the big reasons we have difficulty recruiting into community practice is because of the overburden of all of these administrative realities that people don’t really know exist.”
Higgs says he hopes to begin talks on a bilateral agreement in the coming days and weeks.
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