NSHA fail stands out
The provincial government got good marks and bad ones this week from the auditor general’s two-year checkup on whether it is keeping promises to fix problems identified in the AG’S 2014 and 2015 reports.
On the kudos side, AG Michael Pickup gives 16 government organizations a hat’s off for completing more than 80 per cent of 2014-15 commitments — the standard he expects to see after two years. A dozen of these were standouts — meeting 100 per cent of their promised actions.
These performances pushed up the overall completion rate to 75 per cent, the best record to date of a government getting its audit commitments done.
But there’s a standout fail on this report card, too. It’s the Nova Scotia Health Authority, which gets poor marks on its inability to address AG recommendations on reducing surgical wait times, improving operating room efficiencies and setting specific, public wait-time targets for right now and the near future, not just for years away.
The NSHA has completed only 44 per cent of promised actions on 201415 audit recommendations and only two of seven of those related to long surgical waits which, as Mr. Pickup puts mildly, “is a serious issue.”
Government data show 90 per cent of patients are still waiting more than 18 months for hip or knee replacements, excluding the wait to first meet a surgeon. The national benchmark, accepted by the province, is six months. The NSHA says it has a detailed plan to meet this by 2020.
Frankly, that would be a heroic improvement to achieve in two years. And given how little change we’ve seen for the past two, Mr. Pickup is bang on in urging the NSHA to show us its detailed plan, to publicly report on how and when wait times will improve and to set “the significant reductions targets needed from now to 2020.” In other words, we need to see an actual series of targets, not just woolly promises, to hold NSHA’S feet to the fire.
There is some cause for hope in the 2018-19 provincial budget, which added $8.8 million to do 350 more joint surgeries this year (bringing total spending in this area to $15.2 million for 2018-19). The funding is to hire more surgeons, create a central booking system, raise OR efficiency and do more pre-surgical therapy. NSHA also told the AG that its surgical services and wait-times teams have detailed plans to improve waits and OR usage, with target numbers, internal tracking and periodic reporting.
So let the public in on it. Let’s see the progressively improving targets NSHA must meet to get to the 2020 goal. Patients need that information. And NSHA needs to show its plan is good enough to pass the test of public scrutiny.