Groups want meeting on MUHC ‘crisis’

‘Their role is not to manage,’ Barrette says

Health Minister Gaétan Barrette is declining to say whether he will take part in an urgent meeting with stakeholders of the McGill University Health Centre on the fate of the troubled institution.

The seven foundations of the MUHC requested the meeting with Barrette on Thursday, but the minister has not yet responded, the Montreal Gazette has learned. Meanwhile, a prominent anglophone-rights group added its concerns to the future of the MUHC on Friday, declaring that the hospital network’s predicament has devolved into a full-fledged crisis.

“There is a crisis. Everybody now, finally, recognizes there’s a crisis,” Geoffrey Chambers, vice-president of the Quebec Community Groups, said in a statement.

“Let’s shift the focus to the underlying issues and get on with the job, rather than casting blame, raising anxiety or trying to battle this out in the media.”

The foundations of the MUHC, which have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for research and medical equipment, warned Barrette on Thursday that any “imposed structural changes to our hospital network, without meaningful prior dialogue with the community, would do nothing to address our current financing needs, nor contribute to lasting solutions to our problems.”

Barrette responded with a communiqué of his own early Friday morning, reminding the foundations “their role is not to manage health-care institutions.” He did not indicate whether he has accepted the foundations’ invitation.

Julie White, Barrette’s press attaché, did not respond to email queries Thursday or Friday asking whether the minister has agreed to a meeting. An MUHC official said he was unaware of whether the minister has consented to a meeting.

Julie Quenneville, president of the MUHC Foundation, did not respond to a similar email query on Friday. (Quenneville’s LinkedIn page states she worked as an associate chief of staff to Philippe Couillard from 2003 to 2005 when the current premier served as health minister.)

On Tuesday, Barrette suggested the MUHC needs to be “stabilized,” and he mentioned the possibility of it being folded into a larger “conglomerate.” Barrette was alluding to proposals to merge the MUHC with two west-end health organizations. On Friday, Barrette gave an interview to CTV in which he repeated the word “conglomerate.”

“I have said and I still say that those ideas do have merit,” Barrette added. “They do have merit. But I will not impose anything on anybody.”