Skip to main content

Health Care Check Up - Public Meeting in The Pas

February 26, I was in The Pas with Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont as part of our public consultations on the status of Health Care in Manitoba.  There is a major concern over Health Care in Manitoba at the moment, in part because the Pallister PCs have been making major changes and these are causing concern, uncertainty and low morale within the health care system.

In each of our public meetings as part of our effort to see where health care is at, we asked three questions.  1) What is working well?   This question is important because the starting place for improving our health care system is understanding what is working well.   Items that fall in this category need to be supported and indeed built upon and used as models of good care to improve the system. 2) What is not working?   This is an important question because it identifies where there are problems which need to be understood and addressed to improve the system. 3) Where do we need to invest? This is a critical question because it identifies areas which will need additional funding in order to correct the deficiency. 

We had a number of people who were very knowledgeable about the health situation in The Pas attending our meeting.  They were very engaged and were able to identify items in each of the three categories.  A brief mention of some of these items is below:  It is not exhaustive.  A more complete report will come when we have finished our public meetings;

What is working well?
- When the Nun's were running the hospital a number of years ago, it was well cared for, the health of people was well looked after, the inside of the hospital was kept spotlessly clean and the doctors showed up when they were needed. 
- The current nurses in The Pas are for the most part exceptional
- The Bachelor of Nursing program in The Pas at UCN has been very good and very helpful in ensuring there are quality nurses working in the community.
- The Cancer Care outreach program is awesome
- The NUKA program at OCN, which has an integrated approach to mental and physical health and it patient focused, is achieving very good results for people, particularly those with chronic diabetes and reducing the need to transport people to Winnipeg
- Recent improvements in applying Jordan's Principle and in improving mental health coverage at OCN are positive
-       
What is not working?
- A resident in The Pas who was sent to Winnipeg for an appointment only to arrive in Winnipeg to find the doctor was on vacation wasted 18 hours spent travelling, $3000 in transportation costs and was completely unnecessary as the problem could easily have been handled over telehealth.
- Long waits - up to 7 hours - to see a doctor in The Pas Emergency Room for emergencies.
- Long delays in reimbursement for medical expenses when there is dual coverage by Manitoba Health and by an employee health plan.
- Insufficient support for mental health

Where do we need to invest to improve our health care system? 
- In much more effective continuing medical education for physicians in The Pas
- In ensuring major improvements to the telehealth system in The Pas and its use by The Pas physicians and in the access to specialists in Winnipeg when needed, including for emergencies during the night.
- In audits of doctors by the College of Physicians and Surgeons or by the Faculty of Medicine (clarity is needed as to which body is responsible) where concerns are raised about the quality of care being provided. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dougald Lamont speaks at Meth Forum last night to present positive ideas to address the epidemic, while exposing the lack of action by the Pallister Conservatives

Last night at the Notre Dame Recreation Centre in St. Boniface, at an Election Forum on the Meth Crisis in Manitoba, Dougald Lamont spoke eloquently about the severity of the meth epidemic and described the Liberal plan to address it.  The Liberal Plan will make sure that there is a single province-wide phone number for people, or friends of people, who need help dealing with meth to call (as there is in Alberta) and that there will be rapid access to a seamless series of steps - stabilization, detoxification, treatment, extended supportive housing etc so that people with meth addiction can be helped well and effectively and so that they can rebuild their lives.  The Liberal meth plan will be helped by our approach to mental health (putting psychological therapies under medicare), and to poverty (providing better support).  It will also be helped by our vigorous efforts to help young people understand the problems with meth in our education system and to provide alternative positive
3 comments
Read more

Manitoba Liberal accomplishments

  Examples of Manitoba Liberal accomplishments in the last three years Ensured that 2,000 Manitoba fishers were able to earn a living in 2020   (To see the full story click on this link ). Introduced a bill that includes retired teachers on the Pension Investment Board which governs their pension investments. Introduced amendments to ensure school aged children are included in childcare and early childhood education plans moving forward. Called for improvements in the management of the COVID pandemic: ·          We called for attention to personal care homes even before there was a single case in a personal care home. ·            We called for a rapid response team to address outbreaks in personal care homes months before the PCs acted.  ·          We called for a science-based approach to preparing schools to   improve ventilation and humidity long before the PCs acted. Helped hundreds of individuals with issues during the pandemic including those on social assistance
Post a Comment
Read more

The Indigenous Science Conference in Winnipeg June 14-16

  June 14 to 16, I spent three days at the Turtle Island Indigenous Science Conference.  It was very worthwhile.   Speaker after speaker talked of the benefits of using both western or mainstream science and Indigenous science.  There is much we can learn from both approaches.   With me above is Myrle Ballard, one of the principal organizers of the conference.  Myrle Ballard, from Lake St. Martin in Manitoba, worked closely with Roger Dube a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, and many others to make this conference, the first of its kind, a success.  As Roger Dube, Mohawk and Abenaki, a physicist, commented "My feeling is that the fusion of traditional ecological knowledge and Western science methodology should rapidly lead the researchers to much more holistic solutions to problems."   Dr. Myrle Ballard was the first person from her community to get a PhD.  She is currently a professor at the University of Manitoba and the Director of Indigenous Science
Post a Comment
Read more