$20M deal for health

Federal funding agreement will create mobile mental health crisis program

Prince Edward Island will be getting a $20 million cash infusion from Ottawa for home care and mental health and addictions services over the next five years, thanks to a bilateral agreement signed Friday in Charlottetown. Federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor was in P.E.I. Friday for the official photo-op and document signing that will fund additional targeted supports for home care and mental health services.

“These are issues that touch all of us,” she said. “This funding will help improve countless families with much-needed additional support.”

But despite the fact the agreement is not exactly the one P.E.I. Premier Wade MacLauchlan was looking for when he initially rejected it along with the other provinces in December 2016, he said Friday these investments are welcome and will bring much-needed enhancements to health services in P.E.I.

“My part in this is to say how much we appreciate the sideby-side approach and how much our fellow Islanders, that’s to say all of us, benefit from that collaboration that is being supported by these investments today,” MacLauchlan said.

“We must remain side-byside with the federal government, with the minister, so we can respond to the needs in the best way possible.”

This bilateral deal is the result of health accord negotiations between the provinces and the feds that got off to a rocky start in 2016.

When the feds came to the table at that time with this $11 billion, 10-year funding deal for home care and mental health for all the provinces, it was accompanied by a lower increase in annual health transfers than the provinces were hoping for. They wanted six per cent annual increases; the feds offered three.

That’s why the provinces initially rejected the offer. But one by one, they began striking bilateral deals with Ottawa. All provinces have now signed on to the health accord provisions.

For P.E.I., it includes the $20 million in funding announced Friday.

One major new initiative this deal will fund is a new mobile mental health crisis program – something mental health advocates have been calling for in P.E.I. for almost a year.

P.E.I. Health Minister Robert Mitchell said Friday plans for this program are preliminary and it will be rolled out in year three of this five-year agreement, with annual funding of $650,000 beginning in 2019-20. “In announcements made this week with the four new psychologists coming to Prince Edward Island – there’s a lot of experience as part of that team being with mobile mental health crisis teams, so they will be very instrumental in developing what this will look like,” Mitchell said. Opposition Leader James Aylward welcomed this announcement, noting he has personally pushed for government to create a mobile mental health team over the last year. “Prince Edward Island is the last Atlantic province to offer this service,” he said.

“I’m pleased to see some progress being made on this front.”

Additional mental health spending will go toward growing the student well-being teams established this year in some schools to include all P.E.I. schools.

In home and community care, three inter-related projects, which have been previously announced, will enhance the role of paramedics providing home care services. Also, a new home care information sharing initiative will be implemented to create cloud-based electronic medical records that can be accessed by all medical staff dealing with home care clients, including home care nurses, paramedics and other care providers. As well, a new standardized tool will be created to assess individuals seeking home care or long-term care. MacLauchlan is pleased to see these additional targeted resources being added to P.E.I.’s health system but he hopes to continue to work with the federal government on the ever-increasing financial needs in core health-care funding. “When we brought forward our budget for 2018-19, we indicated increases of almost six per cent in the overall expenditures for health and, indeed we’re doing our best, and by days it’s challenging to provide all of the services even within that envelope,” he told reporters.

“This is something even over the course of the five years or 10 years, will continue to be something in which we work together… and we’re very happy that Minister Petitpas Taylor is a fellow Maritimer and understands the challenges that our provinces are facing in this area.”

Another $25 million will be part of a second five-year agreement that will be fleshed out and signed in 2021.