Health-care task force issues interim report
Health Accord task force to present findings to stakeholders and public over next two months
“We’re talking about making significant change that’s equivalent in magnitude to the introduction of Medicare more than 60 years ago.” Sister Elizabeth Davis
Sift through the 120-page interim report of the Newfoundland and Labrador Health Accord Task Force and you’ll find some curious little statistics.
Like this one: 56.3 per cent of residents in Newfoundland and Labrador eat at least one piece of fruit every day, compared to the Canadian average of 66.5 per cent. Far less — 34 per cent — eat vegetables at least once a day, compared to 56 per cent nationally.
It’s just an ort of information, but combined with the report’s reams of other hard numbers and extensive polling data, it paints a clear picture of a health-care system in this province that is completely out of whack with reality.
Peppered throughout the report, released Monday, are anonymized observations from two rounds of town halls held throughout the province since the fall.
Among the more salient ones is this: “Healthy communities mean more than just caring for people after they have already become ill. We need to address poverty and food security by strengthening the social fabric of our communities and ensuring that people have access to affordable, healthy food, warmth and shelter.”
This may seem obvious, but as task force chairs Dr. Pat Parfrey and Sister Elizabeth Davis will tell you, this province is decades behind in taking any sort of co-ordinated approach to addressing social determinants of health.
DISCONNECTED ELEMENTS
“The health system is siloed,” Parfrey said in a short interview with The Telegram Monday. “And it doesn’t work well because it’s so siloed.”
The pair say they are facing a huge endeavour taking on so many aspects of health care in the province, but Davis says the whole point of the accord is to be holistic.
“We’re talking about making significant change that’s equivalent in magnitude to the introduction of Medicare more than 60 years ago. That doesn’t just happen in days or months,” Davis said.
“I’m amazed at where things are now. I never thought that we would have had the degree of coming together of minds that we’ve had in the last four months.”
Parfrey says they are lucky to have the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association (NLMA) on board, as doctors are notoriously resistant to change.
“Based on their input to us through their focus groups and their communications with us, they are fully aligned with the direction that we are going,” he said. “Now, that may never happen again. So, we’ve got to make use of that.”
The main reason is that one of the central pillars of the NLMA’S and the task force’s vision for the province is team-based community care, something that exists only in small pockets at the moment.
MAMMOTH TASK
The next step for the task force is to take its direction statements to stakeholders and the public in May and June of this year.
If it seems like a drawn-out process, Parfrey said, keep in mind that any one of the aspects of health care they’re addressing would be a mammoth task in itself.
“You’ve got to remember, we’re talking about a system that’s been in existence for nearly 60 years that’s dependent on hospitals and doctors, and we’re recommending radical change,” he said.
They’re looking at social and medical factors, changes in communities, changes in the way hospitals deliver care, bringing in virtual care as a critical component of the system and fixing the patchwork ambulance system.
The accord’s six strategy committees now have direction statements in place, and Davis says some concrete proposals for change may start coming — and even being implemented — before the end of the year.
More information is available online at www.healthaccordnl.ca.