Nouvelles

Telegraph-Journal
p. A6, vendredi, 27 février 2009

Health reforms must reduce true costs

New Brunswickers know the former regional health authorities were running deficits, but they don't know why. Without a full accounting of costs, the public has no way to assess claims that the new RHAs are saving money.

Financing is only part of the equation. New Brunswickers also need to compare data on wait times. Only then will legislators be able to judge whether reforms are working.

The CEOs of New Brunswick's former RHAs were open about what was draining their budgets. RHAs approached medicine as an essential local service, and committed to serving patients as quickly as possible. This helped to stabilize waiting times, but it also led to big budget deficits.

Health Minister Michael Murphy says his reforms have reduced RHA deficits by 20 per cent. We hope the Department of Health will produce some evidence to support this. We also hope the department will start discussing waiting times, which have increased.

Seeing fewer patients will reduce costs, but it isn't the outcome New Brunswickers want. To make health care effective and sustainable, the Department of Health needs to rationalize health services. That means taking the politics out of health care investments and restructuring the hospital network to serve provincial objectives.

Electronic health records will help streamline the system; so will centralizing support services. But the greatest costs are labour and the capital invested in diagnostic machines that are used less than 25 per cent of the time.

Government must find innovative ways to reduce duplication and increase productivity. If it cannot, hospital deficits and long waits will remain - the symptoms of fundamental flaws in the health care system.