Northern health centres worry about consequences of single health region
- NC Raine | February 28, 2017
In early January, the Saskatchewan government announced plans to consolidate the province's twelve health regions into a single provincial health entity.
The move to a single health region, according to Health Minister Jim Reiter, will provide better administration and less duplication. Community advisory networks acting as an outlet for local concerns will replace the current health regions. The Health Ministry believes the redesign will save the province $20 to $30 million by 2018-19.
The government maintains that it is merging administration, not centralizing services for people spread throughout the province, and patients will receive the same or better care. However, there has been skepticism that the remodelled health region will come at a compromise to health-care in northern and rural communities.
“Unfortunately, the North always seems to be 'no man's land' – where they're not allowing us to be the true drivers of the outcome,” says Greg Ross, Superintendent of the Elders Complex and former Government Relations at Pinehouse Lake First Nation. “So yes, I believe [this decision] to be wrong for the North.”
Ross says that he fears communities across the province won't have an adequate network to engage the new health region in order to ensure health-care is effective at all levels, and community engagement will therefore be jeopardized.
“Isn't the most important aspect of any regional or provincial board the effective community management? Everything else comes secondary or flows from community engagement when it comes to health-care,” says Ross. “A community engagement models needs to be identified before they go down this path.”
Details on just how the consolidated health region will look are scarce. The government says they will assemble a three person advisory panel to study the makeup of the health-care administration, which will issue recommendations for additional consolidated. There has been no decision made as to where the head office of the Provincial Health Authority will be located, nor has a CEO been chosen.
“It's a broad brush they've painting with right now,” says Ross. “You want to make sure each culture should be considered in each discussion. I know that people aren't always eager to consider the differences between the cultures within Saskatchewan, but to totally ignore them becomes problematic.”
With the announcement coming with so few details to assure the public of continued access to quality heath, there is evident concerns for the delivery of quality care in rural communities.
“First Nations will probably just be left out and counted into the whole, bigger scheme,” says Albert Jimmy, Health Director at Onion Lake First Nation.
“[Health-care currently] is far from adequate,” says Jimmy. Onion Lake has taken steps to develop their own health-care system, creating a service agreement with doctors, and obtaining a lab and x-ray facility. Jimmy says he hopes to retain these services when the health authority overhaul begins.
“If First Nations get together and discuss their own health region, maybe we'll have more clout when determining what we want to do.”
The Saskatchewan government says they plan to meet with the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations and intend on having Indigenous representation on the new board. FSIN said Indigenous people need to begin developing a health-care system for themselves, and are concerned the change is predicated largely on cost-cutting, and will lower the standard of health-care for everyone.
“Indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan have been taking a greater role in the design and delivery of health services in the province. Our treaty right to health continues to be eroded,” FSIN Chief Bobby Camera said in a news release.
Unions and politicians have also been expressing their concerns about how consolidating twelve health regions will impact patients.
"When the Sask. Party talks about consolidation, everyone knows they mean cuts — cuts to health care centres, cuts to frontline health care workers, and cuts to the care Saskatchewan people deserve," said NDP MLA Danielle Chartier in a news release.
Barbara Cape, President of SEIU-West, says the move has the potential to negatively affect both patient care and the provision of health-care services. She doubts that the change will result in any cost savings.
In 2008, Alberta similarly moved from regional health authorities to a centralized Alberta Health Services super-board. But the has been far from encouraging to residents in Saskatchewan, with the AHS marked by organizational disorder, controversial spending, long wait lists, bureaucratic turf wars, and scandals over executive payouts.
The government says they hope to consolidate the twelve health regions into a single entity by fall.