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Monday, August 10, 2009
News Canada
Nursing a grievance
In 2004, premiers formulated a 10-year plan to improve Canadian health care. Five years along, critics complain little has been done ...

By SHARON LEM, SUN MEDIA

Last Updated: 10th August 2009, 4:11am

It's been five years since Canada's premiers agreed to a 10-year strategy to boost health care.

But in that time there's been little action to actually address doctor and nursing shortages, lengthy wait times and other ills of this country's medical system, health-care critics told Sun Media.

First ministers from across Canada met for their annual summer meeting of the Council of Federation last week in Saskatchewan, the place where Tommy Douglas -- the father of medicare -- launched Canada's health-care program.

In 2004, a 10-year-plan to strengthen health care was agreed upon by Canada's first ministers.

The premiers' biggest concern was to improve access to care and reduce waiting times. The wish list included:

- Strategies to address the shortage of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and technologists.

- Improving home care and community care.

- A national pharmaceutical plan.

- Improving electronic health records and telehealth programs for Canadians living in rural or remote areas and giving better health-care access to northern communities.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses, which was also meeting in Regina last week, blasted the premiers for doing "very little" in the five years that have passed since the inception in 2004.

"Not a lot of work has been happening in some provinces. At best, it's a patchwork approach through the provinces and territories," said Lisa Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

"The federal government has dropped the ball ... we need to put pressure on the federal government to show leadership and provide funding to carry out the 10-year plan," she said.

"With a shortage of 16,000 nurses across Canada, this will mean the patients in the community will lose 2,000 hours of less nursing care per nurse and that will mean longer waiting times and more surgeries postponed," Silas said.

Ontario Health Minister David Caplan agrees there's still more to be done.

"Our government has two overarching priorities when it comes to health care: reducing wait times and increasing access to family health care. We're making progress toward those goals," Caplan said.

"Today, 800,000 Ontarians who didn't have a family health-care provider in 2003, have one. We have lowered wait times for key surgeries and set ambitious emergency room wait time targets," Caplan said.

Vicki McKenna, vice-president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said she's concerned over the lack of progress Ontario has made.

"Here we are in 2009 and in 2004 the Ontario premier promised to act on a number of priorities with respect to health care and we don't see the progress we'd like to see," she said.

"We're concerned about the human resources strategies for all health-care providers and we're concerned about the primary-care issues which continue to plague us," McKenna said.

While the Ontario government has made some movement on improving wait times, the financial resources allocated to that task took away from primary health- care reform, which is in "dire need" of attention, she said.

"Improving wait times is a piece of it, but it's not key to the health-care system and it's like they robbed Peter to pay Paul," McKenna said.

"The Ontario premier is not looking at the health-care system as a whole -- he's taking a piecemeal approach. There have been some gains, but it's not enough after five years," she said.

NDP health critic Frances Gelinas echoed McKenna's sentiments.

"When the 10-year plan first came out it was going in the right direction ... but since 2004 there have been very few details and a lot of money spent," Gelinas said.

She gave the Liberals a failing grade in almost all areas, pointing to the disastrous eHealth fiasco, the fact that a million Ontarians still don't have access to a doctor and that a national pharmacare program has not seen the light of day.

SHARON.LEM@SUNMEDIA.CA

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 6-sun.html