Government releases blueprint for health-care consolidation but plans remain vague By: Jessica Botelho-Urbanski and Larry Kusch Posted: 6:55 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 14, 2018

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This article was published 13/06/2018 (2290 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government shared its blueprint for consolidating health care administrative services Thursday, and would not reassure employees their jobs would be safe in the move to streamline services.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen called the moves “bold steps” that would improve health-care outcomes for Manitobans. 

“As minister of health, I have a responsibility to ensure that health care is deliverable today. But I also have a responsibility to ensure health care is sustainable to be able to be delivered tomorrow – for your kids, for mine and for our grandkids,” he said.

Goertzen was joined by deputy minister Karen Herd, Dr. Brock Wright, the CEO of Shared Health, and Ian Shaw, who’s leading the transformation team, to explain the five-year plan to give more responsibility to a new entity called Shared Health. 

In the first wave of change, Shared Health will take over some services, such as food, laundry and payroll, that the five regional health authorities currently run.

Cancer Care Manitoba will continue to operate independently. Meantime, the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, the Selkirk Mental Health Centre and the Cadham Provincial Laboratory will carry on as normal until the second phase of changes when they may move to Shared Health.

No dates are set for the changes.

Wright said he hears from health officials across the province that there is a willingness to improve the status quo. 

“People do understand as well that we need to find more efficient ways of providing health services so that resources can be redeployed to areas of real need… mental health and addictions, Indigenous health, hip and knee surgery, cataract surgery and many other areas,” he said. 

Shaw said the restructuring should save $64 million a year. Goertzen called that a “conservative” estimate. 

“I think there are more savings than that. The plan isn’t driven specifically by savings. This plan is driven by having a better system, but there will be more savings,” Goertzen said. 

He wasn’t prepared to say how those savings would be made and could not be pinned down on how many jobs would be cut.

“A lot of transformation is going to happen in terms of negotiation and discussions, so we don’t have that number,” Goertzen said. 

“Health care, while it’s a significant economic driver, it’s not my mandate to build the economy through economic development of health care. My mandate is to deliver health care in the best way that it can be delivered.” 

The Opposition NDP and the union that represents 17,000 Manitoba health workers panned the announcement.

“It feels actually like they’re making it up as they go along. They don’t seem to have a clear well-thought out plan other than the fact they want to cut money out from health care,” said Michelle Gawronsky, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union.

Gawronsky said the union has continually asked the government for “concrete details” about the restructuring plan, but any time the MGEU meets with government officials, “we are left with more questions than answers.”

“What we got… today, as far as I’m concerned, is the provincial government is going to impose more chaos onto our health care system,” Gawronsky said.

“They’re causing more anxiety, more fear on front-line health workers.”

NDP health critic Andrew Swan said he does not understand how some of the proposed moves – such as removing Health Sciences Centre from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s control on April 1, 2019 – will improve health care.

“I don’t really understand how they think that this reorganization is going to provide better care,” he said. “Our fear is that by moving things around, it’s going to mask further cuts this government is going to make. It’s much harder to follow the money and, more importantly, follow the positions when they move them around this way.”

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Larry Kusch
Legislature reporter

Larry Kusch didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life until he attended a high school newspaper editor’s workshop in Regina in the summer of 1969 and listened to a university student speak glowingly about the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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