Tories take ownership of hospital hallways

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2017 (2444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was clear that it was a different kind of health-care announcement when Kelvin Goertzen stepped up to the podium.

The provincial health minister — as well as his boss, Premier Brian Pallister — has not been present at most of the budget-reduction revelations rolled out in recent weeks. Instead, the task of explaining what, or whom, is being cut from Manitoba’s roster of health-care services has mostly been left to spokespeople for the various regional authorities tasked with meeting austerity targets imposed by the government.

But on Monday, Mr. Goertzen was front and centre as the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority unveiled plans to spend nearly $20 million over the next couple of years on structural renovations that will allow local hospitals to adapt to changing functional roles associated with Manitoba’s ongoing health-care reorganization.

It’s a significant capital investment, particularly at a time when the Pallister government has been taken to task for a constant stream of lesser cuts — including the elimination of breastfeeding consultants and the restricted provision of such relatively small-ticket items as incontinence garments, warmed blankets and washcloths — that has been characterized by its critics as a bunch of mean-spirited nickel-and-dime measures.

“We’ve always said the system isn’t working,” Mr. Goertzen explained during Monday’s announcement. “We signalled in April that there would need to be capital changes with the reorganization to ensure (it) happened the way it needs to happen.”

The $19.9-million capital-improvements package includes renovations to St. Boniface Hospital, Victoria General Hospital, Health Sciences Centre and Deer Lodge Centre aimed at improving patient flow and, as a result, reducing wait times and making more efficient use of available beds.

Not surprisingly, the NDP was quick to criticize the capital-expenditure announcement, citing the cash outlay as evidence the provincial government was unprepared as it embarked on massive cost-cutting in the health-care realm.

Ironically, this reconfiguring of hallways and treatment rooms at Winnipeg hospitals might also be seen as the moment at which the ruling Progressive Conservatives formally took ownership of a years-ago NDP promise that later became the NDP’s policy albatross: hallway medicine, and the successive Doer/Selinger governments’ inability to deliver on a signature pledge to make it go away.

In announcing the bricks-and-mortar renovations that will facilitate their philosophical restructuring of health care, the provincial Tories have created a metaphorical signpost that marks the measurable beginning of the effort to improve the pace and practice of delivering health services.

For more than a decade, the then-opposition Progressive Conservatives dined out on the New Democrats’ failure to eliminate hallway medicine. Improvement would not have sufficed; Mr. Doer’s campaign-defining commitment was that the practice of warehousing patients in hospital corridors would cease. It did not, and by the end of the NDP’s run, increasing wait times and ubiquitous hallway stretchers were symbolic of the Selinger government’s near-complete failure in the electorate’s eyes.

As demolition and renovation plans move forward, the clock begins ticking in earnest on the Pallister government’s austerity agenda and improved health-care pledge. If, as promised, the aggressive implementation of reductions and restructuring produces measurable results in terms of shorter wait times and streamlined services, the government will have delivered on its signature promise and achieved all it needs to ensure an easy re-election in 2020.

If, however, $20 million doesn’t buy Manitobans anything more than reconfigured and freshly painted hallways in which to house still-waiting patients in a health-care system that has overhauled but not improved, the NDP might be given cause to ponder a sooner-than-expected return to political relevance.