Quebec urged to ‘invest’ in MUHC
The Quebec government must invest in the struggling McGill University Health Centre in the same way it came to the financial rescue of Bombardier’s aerospace division, says the co-president of the MUHC central users’ committee.
“If the government of Quebec can bail Bombardier out of its financial difficulties because it considers that Bombardier is a Quebec institution, then it can very well make a similar investment in the MUHC,” Amy Ma said.
Like Bombardier, “the MUHC is a Quebec institution with worldrenowned clinical care, teaching and research,” Ma added, and the government cannot ignore “the health and well-being of patients in the community.”
Ma was commenting on a Montreal Gazette article published Monday that reported that relations between the MUHC and Health Minister Gaétan Barrette have sunk to a new low as the hospital network braces for yet more budget cuts.
Both the MUHC board chairman, Claudio Bussandri, and a group of doctors have sent urgent letters to Barrette urging the minister to reconsider what they contend is an unrealistic funding formula based on a 10-year-old clinical plan. The minister took more than two months to reply to the doctors, and hasn’t responded to Bussandri.
News of the strained relations and budget cuts have raised concerns that the MUHC will find it increasingly difficult to recruit talented physicians and researchers from around the world. At the same time, though, there are signs of a grassroots mobilization to compel Barrette to restore funding to reflect the increase in the MUHC’s clinical volumes.
A number of prominent Montrealers have begun writing to their Liberal MNAs, the Gazette has learned.
The users’ committee is also devising a strategy to raise public awareness, and Montrealers are making their concerns known through social media.
Asked whether the government should treat the MUHC the way it has Bombardier, a spokesperson for Barrette sidestepped the question.
“The MUHC is financed exactly according to the same parameters as other institutions,” Julie White said in an email Tuesday.
The MUHC, however, is the largest teaching hospital network in the province.
And in late 2015, senior MUHC managers were stunned to discover that the government decided unilaterally to fund the institution based on a bed-occupancy rate of 85 per cent.
The MUHC’s occupancy rate hovered at 90 per cent and sometimes rose to 95 per cent. The decision to fund the MUHC at the lower rate forced the organization to close beds, and cancel more than 1,000 elective surgeries, among other cuts.
In a radio interview last month, Barrette said “there is a problem in terms of leadership at the MUHC and we are addressing that issue.”
Barrette was alluding to a decision to slash the secretarial staff of the surgeons.
But the minister has criticized MUHC managers over a number of other dossiers — from moneylosing real estate ventures to the handling of its sewage problems after the Glen site superhospital opened in April 2015.
Still, Ma said the government has a moral responsibility to help the MUHC in its time of need.