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Provincial Health Ministers Want Federal Dollars to Meet Wait-Time Guarantees

Posted on: Friday, 8 December 2006, 18:00 CST

By CHRIS MORRIS

MONCTON, N.B. (CP) - Provincial and territorial health ministers say they are all singing from the same song book when it comes to guaranteed medical wait times, and the tune is strikingly familiar - more money from Ottawa or it will never happen.

The ministers met Friday in Moncton to co-ordinate their positions for a conference on Saturday with federal Health Minister Tony Clement. Wait times will be one of the most contentious issues.

The meeting comes just days after the provinces and territories were criticized by the Canadian Wait Time Alliance for failing to produce the necessary data to assess the impact of the 2004 health-care agreement, which is supposed to fix health care in Canada for a generation.

New Brunswick Health Minister Mike Murphy said that although the health-care accord with the federal government provides funds for things like studies and pilot projects, there's not enough to help the provinces and territories meet their wait-time targets.

"Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is," said Murphy, chairman of the two-day federal-provincial meeting.

"In health care you always follow the money. There is a belief that the federal government needs to be more of a financial partner on a number of initiatives - pandemic planning, catastrophic drugs, all of the issues we hear about in the media."

Murphy said wait-time guarantees are especially complex and will require more than additional money.

"It involves a lot of clinical change," he said, adding that the provinces are not at a standstill on the issue.

The ministers headed into their day-long meeting Friday unsure they had consensus on a number of critical issues, including wait-time guarantees.

Nova Scotia Health Minister Chris d'Entremont said providing the required equipment and staff to meet wait-time guarantees could cost his province an extra $50 million per year.

He said following the meeting he is satisfied the provincial ministers are together on the issue.

"We're all singing from the same song book," d'Entremont said.

Under the 2004 health-care accord, provinces were to provide comparable indicators on access to care, but that hasn't happened.

Experts who worked on the report for the Canadian Wait Time Alliance said it's regrettable that the provinces use inconsistent methodology to report results, making it impossible to identify leaders or laggards.

Two provinces - Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland - have not set up wait-time websites.

The guarantees were supposed to ensure patients could go to another jurisdiction at government expense if timely care was not available at home.

Meanwhile, members of a group called the Best Medicines Coalition came to Moncton to publicly plea for governments to address the issue of unequal access to medications in Canada.

The national lobby group, which is partially funded by pharmaceutical companies, said Atlantic Canadians suffer the most from insurance companies dictating what medicines they can use, often based on cost rather than need.

Linda Wilhelm of New Brunswick, who had a long battle with insurers and the provincial government to get medications she needed for severe rheumatoid arthritis, said governments would save money in the long run by allowing ill people to get the medicine they need to return to productive lives.

"The federal government is so focused on wait times, they're not looking at the cause of those wait times," she said.

Source: Canadian Press

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