NDP to province: ‘Back away’ from private health care

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This article was published 21/09/2022 (1248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent video of Premier Heather Stefanson touting private and not-for-profit health-care partnerships is fuelling a war of words between the Manitoba NDP and Progressive Conservatives.

The NDP released an undated 13-second video clip of the premier on the party’s YouTube channel Tuesday in which Stefanson appears to be speaking at an event about increasing capacity in the province’s health-care system by creating “innovative” private and not-for-profit partnerships.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said Stefanson’s statements threaten the public health-care system.

“It’s the ideology of the PCs and their donors that they want to buy their way to the front of the line of the health-care system, and we don’t think that’s right,” Kinew said Tuesday in an interview with the Sun.

Stefanson’s statements are especially worrying for Kinew, considering recent media reports of the Health Sciences Centre emergency room — the largest in the province — running out of room for patients, and people waiting on stretchers for hours to be cared for by staff.

While HSC is just one hospital, people from across the province go there for care, and therefore the issues within the hospital affect everyone, he said. Kinew added it’s indicative of the state of other Manitoba hospitals and health centres that have been closed or have had their hours reduced due to staff shortages.

The Progressive Conservatives should be investing in public health care first, Kinew said. Private health-care deals tend to be more expensive and undermine access for all. He pointed to the deal the PCs made to send spinal surgery patients to Sanford Hospital in Fargo, N.D., as a temporary measure to ease Manitoba’s surgical backlog.

Around 40 Manitobans have received spinal surgery at Sanford Health Fargo under an agreement signed in February between the provincial government and the American non-profit health system.

However, the cost to perform those operations is being withheld by the province. Last week, the Winnipeg Free Press received a copy of the untendered agreement, with information on the projected value of the contracts and fees redacted. The province invoked legislation that allows it to withhold information that may be harmful to a third party’s business interests.

The Manitoba government also signed agreements with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and Big Thunder Orthopedic Associates in northwestern Ontario to perform up to 750 hip and knee surgeries on Manitobans annually over the next two years.

“It is a foundational Canadian value that we have a public health-care system at home,” Kinew said. “We want to see the government back away from any sort of private deal and fix the public system.”

Rebuilding the province’s health-care system will be front-and-centre for the NDP when the Manitoba legislature resumes for the fall sitting next week, Kinew said.

There are many facets that need to be addressed in fixing the health-care system, but it needs to start with supporting the people in it, he said. One immediate step could be ending mandatory overtime for nurses, which would decrease the burden on staff and, hopefully, improve retention.

“We have a real retention issue. We can’t afford to lose any more nurses,” he said.

Over the long term, he said, the government should work more with post-secondary schools to train additional nurses.

Calling the NDP statements a form of fear mongering, a provincial spokesperson said the government is taking action to address long-standing medical challenges and pandemic backlogs.

“Is the leader of the Opposition suggesting that Manitoba not use private clinics both here in the province or in other jurisdictions to reduce wait lists?” the spokesperson stated in an email. “In addition to increasing capacity in Manitoba, we are also partnering with other jurisdictions to get Manitobans the services they need, sooner.”

These types of service agreements are necessary to address the current backlog, the spokesperson said.

Service agreements are negotiated on an individual basis modelled on Manitoba’s out-of-province medical services referral program, which has been in place for more than 40 years. In that service agreement, for out-of-country cases, patients are referred to the program for specialist care that can’t be provided in Manitoba or other Canadian jurisdictions.

Since 2007, about 800 Manitoba patients have received care through the program, with more than 60 travelling outside of Canada for operations. Most Canadian jurisdictions have a similar program in place, and it is a standard part of the care plan for Manitoba residents, the spokesperson added.

In terms of cost, Manitoba is billed on a per-patient case and those expenses will be included as part of regular financial reporting, they said.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com, with files from The Brandon Sun and the Winnipeg Free Press

» Twitter: @karenleighmcki1