MUHC needs to be ‘stabilized’: Barrette
The McGill University Health Centre needs to be “stabilized,” Health Minister Gaétan Barrette declared Tuesday, and he raised the possibility that the MUHC might be folded into an even larger “conglomerate.”
Speaking on the Aaron Rand Show on CJAD, Barrette disagreed that the five-hospital network is underfunded, and he accused MUHC doctors of making “comments that are not factual” and “this is one of the problems that the institution has today.”
“I think the issue of the day is to make sure that the MUHC is stabilized, maybe I can use that word, and go through a period of getting back on their feet,” Barrette said in an interview that focused exclusively on the MUHC.
“It is true that there is a lot of debate within the institution, the morale is not where it should be for that type of institution and I think this is where the efforts (need) to be put today.”
Barrette disputed claims that the MUHC has been underfunded by tens of millions of dollars, despite rising clinical volumes for cardiac surgery and oncology. He also denied that the MUHC has fewer than 800 funded beds.
“They are viewing wrongly that they are underfunded,” Barrette said. “They are not.”
“The reasoning of those people is always the same,” he added. “They are funded at 85 per cent, like every institution in this province. Why? Because beds are never anywhere in the province open at 100 per cent (capacity).”
Without providing any figures, Barrette contended that the MUHC is funded “slightly higher” per bed than the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montréal (CHUM).
Meanwhile, the MUHC’s board of directors raised concerns repeatedly at a public meeting Tuesday night about a lack of funding.
Dr. Olivier Court, president of the MUHC’s council of physicians, dentists and pharmacists, told the meeting that the Health Department is holding the hospital network to a 10-year-old clinical plan that no longer reflects today’s clinical reality.
“In some areas like strokes, the government even gave us regional mandates to take care of them, but these have not been adjusted to the clinical plan,” he explained. “So these are all volumes that we are doing in excess of the clinical plan for which the activities have not been funded. So that’s part of the problem that we have.”
Officials also confirmed at the meeting that the MUHC has an average of 770 funded beds, not the figure of 832 cited by Barrette.
Martine Alfonso, the MUHC’s interim executive director, declined to comment on Barrette’s remarks that the CHUM is funded less than the MUHC.
“I do not know of the CHUM budget,” she told reporters after the meeting. “What I know is that we have funding at 85 per cent of the budget (for bed occupancy), which is slightly less than what we had before.”
Barrette reiterated that he won’t push for a merger of the MUHC with two west-end health organizations. However, he used the word “conglomerate” for the first time.
“What’s been on the table in informal discussions until now was not a merger in itself but more of a conglomerate where institutions are collaborating together within whatever body that would be theoretically in place, but certainly not a full merger,” Barrette said. “But this is, again, something that is not on the table today.”