This commentator has never been a big fan of Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins. Being a medical doctor has never been a criterion for the job. Although being ruthless helps. That we did not expect from Hoskins.
His recently announced reforms could be the start of something. We are just not sure what at this stage. Thinking back to the days when we were a found-in at the ministry and attempting to get it out of one of its many messes, we found it to be a bloated and bureaucratic nightmare.
The creation of the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) and their companion Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) was supposed to disperse that Queen’s Park bureaucracy to where they might be effective closer to the patients. Instead we got three bloated bureaucratic nightmares and a frustrated patient backlog.
And to suggest that the cream rises to the top in this type of bureaucracy is the exact opposite of what really happens. What happens in Ontario is that the Greater Toronto Area gets what it needs and the rest of the province only think they are getting any service. Just come 90 kilometres up Highway 400 and it is a different world.
Have you ever had the experience of rushing a patient with a pulmonary embolism to a beautiful big hospital the locals built and waiting twelve hours for a doctor to come by and ask how the patient is feeling. They had about ten patients penned in that hurry-up-and-wait room and after six hours we were starting to rebel. There was a rule that no food was allowed in waiting rooms. We broke the rule.
That is what Eric Hoskins has to do if Premier Wynne leaves him in the health portfolio. Admittedly the job needs a rebel and his announcement the other day was the first sign of any gumption. The job also needs a comer and Wynne just might have Hoskins down to go.
The Patients First Act that Hoskins announced might sound like a public relations effort but there seems to be enough thinking behind it to give it potential. If it really does give patients quicker access to medical help, enables them to move from hospital to home with greater ease and actually gets rid of the entire CCAC bureaucracy, it could be worth a lot.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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