Province's health plans get thumbs up from CMA
Published Saturday August 9th, 2008
Program | Top Canadian medical official applauds Murphy's new direction
The Canadian Medical Association's incoming president is hailing Health Minister Michael Murphy's fight against wait times as refreshing"and applauding the Liberal government's new direction for health care.
Murphy outlined his vision for health-care reform in a meeting with the association in Ottawa on Friday that includes injecting more competition and collaboration into the system, as well as finding new ways to fund hospitals and pay physicians.
"It is refreshing to see that a politician is now joining us in the war against the wait times because the association has started that and now we have politicians who want to move on and do something, we need action in that area," said Robert Ouellet, the president-elect of the association.
"We were very pleased with the program of your health minister."
The Department of Health has retained Dr. Wendy Thomson, an adviser to former British prime minister Tony Blair, to report on whether to switch to an activity-based funding formula for hospitals.
She's also examining whether to allow the private sector to erase wait times for diagnostic imaging and usher in a new form of collaborative practices where there's a reward for reducing wait times and improving the health of patients.
Murphy ramped up his attack on wait times by outlining to the association a forthcoming probe into scrapping the system of medical billing numbers with a patient-focused funding system.
That new proposal is based on a model used in Europe that replaces block grants with funding that rises by the number of patients that are treated.
The health minister said he hasn't rendered a final decision on whether to scrap the billing-numbers scheme.
However, he pointed out that it was developed during a different era in health care.
Murphy said the new system is a form of "patient power" and there is mounting evidence elsewhere that this payment method is better for patients and could help reduce wait times.
"Patients in New Brunswick don't want bureaucracy, they don't want competition between regions and special interest groups," he said.
"When they see a physician, they want that physician paid for what they have received and not necessarily the tariff that the physician is receiving for simply doing a task."
Ouellet said the British health-care system saw a marked improvement with its waiting times earlier in the decade after moving in this direction.
"I think it is a good move because you have to look at places where they had success and what happened in the UK they were successful," he said.
New Brunswick will also begin assessing whether to follow Manitoba and Ontario in allowing physician assistants to practise in the province.
These individuals could fall anywhere in the spectrum of health professionals and would be utilized in collaborative practices to help a doctor.
Murphy said many of these assistants could be foreign-trained health professionals who don't have the requisite credentials to practise in New Brunswick.
"We have too many qualified medical people out there who can be physician assistants who are driving taxis in Toronto or downtown Moncton," he said. "When you have some people with the ability and substantial background in health care, if there is a place and role for them, we need to look at that.
"That is something we want to explore. That helps us with access to primary health care. It frees up physicians and reduces wait times."
Ouellet said the Armed Forces has benefited from this concept for a long time.
"It is something different and something new and it could be very helpful and the physicians will welcome it," he said.
Murphy also informed the association that he's backing its call on the federal government to set up a $50-million health-care secretariat that would look at human-resources demographics as well as repatriating doctors back to Canada.
The New Brunswick health minister said far too many doctors have fled Canada for the United States and he'd like to work to bring them back across the border.
Murphy said he will lobby the other provincial health ministers to join him and the association in lobbying for this new body.
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