Institutions to get lion’s share of increase
QUEBEC Spending on health care and social services will increase by 4.6 per cent in the coming year, with an emphasis on upgrading hospitals, increasing support for the elderly living in their homes and seniors’ residences, and hiring more nurses. More money will also go to preventing drug addiction and to encouraging teenagers to become more active.
In a reflection of the looming provincial elections, however, a significant amount of space in the health budget documentation detailed how much the government had spent and accomplished in previous years, to counter opposition parties’ and health critics’ reminders of deep cuts to health-spending increases in the earlier days of the austere Liberal leadership.
Health expenditures climbed by 2.9 per cent in the budget year 2016-17 and 2.3 per cent the year before. Experts suggest that to keep up with the so-called rate of medical inflation, the health budget should rise five per cent a year.
But there was next to nothing for the embattled nurses who are forced to work overtime and extra shifts to make up for staff shortages, said Denyse Joseph, vicepresident of the nurses’ union Fédération interprofessionelle de la santé du Québec.
“We are in a crisis. Health-care professionals have come out in the media this month and said they can’t provide safe care given the staffing ratios, and there’s nothing in the budget for that, despite four meetings with (Health Minister Gaétan) Barrette,” Joseph said. “It’s quite disappointing. Does the government care about patients?”
Joseph welcomed the decision to hire more specialized nurses, or “super nurses,” but said such reinvestment in the health-care system cannot mend the deep cuts suffered in the past four years.
The Quebec order of nurses also deplored the fact that no actual money was confirmed in the budget for 16 pilot projects on the nurse-patient ratio to improve care.
Investing is a step in the right direction, said Lucie Tremblay, president of the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec, “but we need to establish conditions that allow nurses to fully occupy their field of practice.”
The lion’s share of the $38.5 billion budgeted for the coming year will go toward health and social service institutions ($26.5 billion), which the government says will increase access to health services. Barrette, alluding to recent protests over salary increases given to the province’s medical specialists and overworked nurses speaking out about high burnout rates, said the portion of the health budget given over to salaries ($12.9 billion for next year) is shrinking, leaving more money available for services.
“In the category of services to the public — the real services, the hospitals, the CLSCs, the CHSLDs — that is going up by 5.3 per cent,” Barrette said Tuesday, with much of it going to equalize services in the regions and to increase medical offerings for the aged in their homes and senior centres, with the help of a $100-million transfer from the federal government.
Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault, however, said the government is overpaying its doctors by roughly $1 billion a year, and their contracts need to be renegotiated.
Home care is getting significant funds, said Carolle Dubé, head of APTS, which represents more than 50,000 unionized health and social service workers, but it’s not clear such investments will help make up for everything lost in the past.
“I no longer trust this government. They need to put back the billion dollars cut from the health care in the last four years,” said patient advocate Paul Brunet, head of the Conseil pour la protection des malades, a provincial patients’ rights organization.
“They negotiated over our heads for services we were supposed to get and gave it to the doctors,” he said, referring to salary hikes negotiated by Quebec specialists for $480 million spread over four years.
The redevelopment of the emergency department at the Lakeshore General Hospital as well as facilities at the Jewish General Hospital and the Charles-LeMoyne hospital in Longueuil are among additional projects being studied as part of the Quebec infrastructure plan.
Among the improvements created over the last two years, the government cited more access to care by reducing diagnostic surgery and emergency waiting times, enhanced homes and residential care for seniors, providing access to a family doctor to nearly 1.1 million people, the hiring of 1,300 nurses in long-term care centres and the opening of 31 super clinics seven days a week to reduce emergency room overcrowding.
Additional investments cited in Tuesday’s budget include $300 million to ensure Quebecers in the regions have similar access to front-line and specialized services, $35 million to prevent drug addiction, $20 million for specialized nurse practitioners and $129 million for home services for seniors.