The C-word

Ross Wiseman is miffed:

Doctors Careless with Word
July 14, 2008

The minister of health is accusing the association which represents doctors of being opportunistic and creating a false impression of a crisis. Ross Wiseman wants the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association to quit using the word "crisis" when focusing on a particular community, region or medical field. On VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms this morning, Wiseman said the association is laying the groundwork for the next round of bargaining in nine months' time.

The medical association declined immediate comment on the minister's accusations.

(Another account via a letter to Nefarious Quebec-Based Anti-Us Propaganda Rag.)

For the interest and information of the medical association, when it does break its radio silence on the Minister's latest fit of sookiness:

A fresh approach to health policy

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for Health Policy and Planning, issued the following statement at a news conference today in St. John's.

[…]

We believe the consultative process is important to finding a solution to the health crisis, but the situation demands open, transparent debate in a free forum where constructive proposals are welcome. Exclusive clubs will not give the government the information it needs to make the critical decisions the situation demands.

[Press release, October 2, 2001]

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for Health Policy and Planning, says, “What this province urgently needs to hear from the Grimes government before it brings down another budget is a clear, unambiguous statement about its intentions for the health system and the implications for service delivery.”

“This lurching from health crisis to health crisis has gone on long enough,” said Wiseman, who notes that the festering deficit and debt problems of the health boards are jeopardizing patient care.

[Press release, February 15, 2002]

With four of the eight medical oncology positions in the province currently vacant and one of six radiation oncology positions vacant, Opposition Health Policy and Planning critic Ross Wiseman is asking the Minister of Health and Community Services how she plans to address the crisis in cancer diagnosis and treatment that has pushed oncologists to the breaking point and left patients to worry whether they are getting the timely care they need.

[Press release, March 25, 2002]

My question today to the minister is: What is she going to do today about the crisis we are going to be facing in the treatment of cancer patients for this Province?

[House of Assembly, March 25, 2002]

Oncology crisis just “the tip of the iceberg”: Wiseman

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for Health Policy and Planning, says it is not only oncologists in this province who have been pushed to the breaking point. Other physicians are equally stressed and ready to take action, either collectively or as individuals, he said.

“We've seen just the tip of the iceberg of the crisis that has gripped physicians in the Newfoundland and Labrador health system,” he said.

[Press release, April 11, 2002]

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition's health critic, says it is not only oncologists in the province who have been pushed to the breaking point.

Other physicians are equally stressed and ready to take action, either collectively or as individuals, he said.

“We've seen just the tip of the iceberg of the crisis that has gripped physicians in the Newfoundland and Labrador health system,' said Wiseman.

“I gave the government ample warning of the brewing crisis among oncologists, but they ignored it.

“Will they also ignore my warning that the crisis among doctors in other fields is growing more serious, as well?” he asked.

[St. John's Telegram, April 12, 2002]

“When I questioned former Health Minister Julie Bettney about this in the House of Assembly in March, she said the government had recruited two cancer specialists – one who would start on the first of July, and the other who would start in October. Unfortunately, although we are getting an additional oncologist in July and another in October, the October arrival will occur at the very time one of our current oncologists goes on a six-month maternity leave. So we will only be one oncologist ahead of where we are now, and the crisis will continue,” [Wiseman] said.

[Press release, June 21, 2002]

Wiseman asks Health Minister why all the reports remain hidden

“The government has been operating for years without a strategic health plan, spending billions upon billions of public dollars without a strategy to ensure the money is being spent effectively. It is not surprising, then, that the health system is in a perpetual state of crisis and health professionals are deeply frustrated,” he said.

[Press release, June 28, 2002]

Ross Wiseman, Opposition critic for health policy and planning, however, believes government is waiting too long to release information on the “long-awaited” plan.

[…]

“Each month lost is another month lurching from crisis to crisis, fraught with the kind of uncertainty that leaves many patients feeling nervous and many health professionals wishing they were elsewhere. It is a ridiculous way to operate a health system,” said Wiseman.

[Deana Stokes Sullivan, St. John's Telegram, June 29, 2002]

Government's handling of emergency physician shortage could create crisis in rural areas

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for Health Policy and Planning, says the provincial government's handling of the emergency physician shortage at the Health Sciences Centre could create a crisis in rural areas of the province.

The Health Sciences Centre is short ten emergency room physicians, and the government's recruitment efforts have had little success in attracting the new physicians needed to avert a crisis in the delivery of emergency care. “Long waits for emergency room services threaten to compromise patient care,” he said.

“Unfortunately for rural areas of our province, the government's recruitment efforts have been catching the attention of physicians in our own rural communities. And, while luring physicians from rural communities to the Health Sciences emergency department might be a quick fix to the emergency room crisis, it would create a deeper and broader crisis throughout rural Newfoundland and Labrador,” said Wiseman.

“Shuffling doctors from one area of our province to another does not address the fundamental problem of physician shortages – and in some instances, it may even make the crisis worse and undermine the efforts we have been making to attract doctors to our rural areas,” he said.
Wiseman said, “The failure of the government's physician recruitment efforts is just another predictable consequence of the government's failure to develop and implement a long-term health strategy. The government has instead been lurching from crisis to crisis – and, as we saw with the fallout from last year's Hay report, their bandaid approach is actually doing more harm than good.”

[Press release, July 5, 2002]

“The government is compromising the health care of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians by delaying an announcement out of fear of the immediate political consequences,” said Wiseman. “The government is more interested in pretending it's doing a good job than in acknowledging the crisis that has gripped our health system and is threatening the health care of our people.”

[Press release, July 16, 2002]

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for Health Policy and Planning, said the same kind of midyear fiscal crisis that gripped the province's health boards in 2001 has begun to grip boards again this year.

[…]

“By leaving the crisis to fester until September – midway through the fiscal year – the Minister forced the boards to cut even deeper than they would have had to if the deficit problem had been identified earlier in the year and the cuts could have been spread out over a longer period.”

“This year, we have a new Minister but the same kind of crisis is brewing. It's déjà vu all over again as another Minister watches the problem fester without publicly acknowledging its magnitude,” he said. “The government has apparently learned nothing from its mistakes.”

[Press release, July 17, 2002]

With interns and residents poised to suspend locum services at noon today and one health care corporation importing high-priced substitutes, Opposition Health Policy and Planning critic Ross Wiseman is holding the Grimes government to account for provoking the physician crisis by neglecting its responsibility to focus on long-term planning.

[…]

He said, “We are seeing just the tip of the iceberg of a huge physician crisis that is threatening the province's health care system. In March, the province's oncologists, who were at the end of their rope, announced they were reducing their workload. Now it is interns and residents. The government is currently in talks with the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association, and we understand that those talks are not going well. I predict that by early fall, all physicians in the province will be on the verge of some form of job action.”

“The responsibility for provoking this crisis rests solely on the shoulders of the Grimes government. For years, they have neglected their obligation to develop a long-term human resource management strategy for our health system. The people of the province are now suffering the consequences of the government's outrageous neglect. By allowing this crisis to fester unaddressed either because they don't know how to address it or because they don't care, the government has pushed physicians in the province to the edge of what they can tolerate,” he said. “With this government's attitude and its reliance on short-term, knee-jerk reactions to crises without any long-term strategic planning, we expect that, by early fall, all physicians in the province will be contemplating similar action.”

[Press release, July 26, 2002]

Opposition health critic Ross Wiseman wants the provincial government to allocate additional money to offset a lengthy waiting list for government-subsidized home support services.

[…]

“The province's home-support services are in crisis and that crisis is not going to disappear by simply ignoring it,” said Wiseman. “The situation warrants an immediate infusion of cash so the boards can meet patients' needs, and it calls for a long-term strategy to ensure the province puts its home-support services on a sound footing for the future.”

[Deanna Stokes Sullivan, St. John's Telegram, August 10, 2002]

The first-quarter budget figures from the province's health and community services boards indicate the boards are not able to make ends meet on the funding they have been given.

Ross Wiseman, the Opposition critic for health policy and planning, said the same kind of mid-year fiscal crisis that gripped the province's health boards in 2001 has begun to grip boards again this year.

[…]

“She told the boards they would have to impose restraint measures in order to come in on target,” he said. “By leaving the crisis to fester until September - midway through the fiscal year - the minister forced the boards to cut even deeper than they would have had to if the deficit problem had been identified earlier in the year and the cuts could have been spread out over a longer period.”

[The Western Star, July 27, 2002]

Opposition Health Policy and Planning critic Ross Wiseman said, in light of the crisis the Health Minister allowed health boards to fall into late last year, it is incumbent on the Minister to release the first-quarter financial results for all the province's institutional and health and community services boards now.

[…]

“Given the fact that the boards had slipped deeply into deficit positions by the time fall rolled around last year and the Minister had only half the year remaining to address the ensuing crisis, the current Minister should have been monitoring and reporting on the boards' financial circumstances this year on a far-more-frequent basis to ensure nothing like that happened again,” he said.

[Press release, August 29, 2002]

Health Minister Gerald Smith doesn't have any idea how many doctors are needed to run the province's health-care system, says Tory health critic Ross Wiseman.

[…]

“I believe we do have a crisis. The crisis is not only that we have a large number of vacancies we can't fill,” Wiseman said Thursday.

[Barb Sweet, St. John's Telegram, August 30, 2002]

With one health care corporation now reporting an operating deficit for the first quarter of about $1 million and the Health Minister's so-called ‘strategic health plan' promising no new funding to help boards cope with the crunch, Opposition Health Policy and Planning critic Ross Wiseman is again urging the Health Minister to immediately release all health boards' first-quarter fiscal reports and announce how he plans to address the looming crisis.

“Two months ago, on July 17, I raised concerns that the province's health boards were starting to experience the same kind of financial crisis that had gripped them in 2001 – but the Minister ignored the alarm bells. On August 29, after hearing that the western board was in trouble, I urged the Minister to release all health boards' updates for the first quarter of the fiscal year, which ended June 30 – but again, the Minister didn't see fit to acknowledge my concern or issue a response. A week ago, the chair of the Western Health Care Corporation announced a first-quarter operating deficit of about $1 million, confirming our fears,” said Wiseman.

“So here we are, with two weeks remaining in the second quarter, yet the Minister still hasn't seen fit to release the health boards' first-quarter fiscal results even though we know that at least one region is experiencing the deep financial problems that the previous Minister left to fester until midway through 2001, with tragic results. Another year, another Minister, yet we see the same failure to be open, honest and effective in addressing a crisis threatening our health system,” he said. “Is this what the Premier means by openness, transparency and effectiveness?”

[Press release, September 18, 2002]

Despite frequent warnings for more than a decade, the Liberal government has done nothing to prepare itself for the increasing number of seniors requiring nursing-home beds, says Opposition health critic Ross Wiseman.

[…]

“This is something predictable. ... We know we had the bulk of baby boomers coming through the system,” Wiseman said. “It really is irresponsible not to have been better prepared for this event today. ... it is criminal that we have people like these eight today who find themselves in a crisis.”

[St. John's Telegram, November 1, 2002]

Opposition Health critic Ross Wiseman is amazed that the Grimes government has waited to hold its first contract talks with the province's private ambulance operators until just five days before their existing contract is due to expire. “How could the government refuse to come to the bargaining table to negotiate a new deal with ambulance operators and avert a crisis until the eleventh hour when things are down to the wire?”

[…]

“This government that talks of long-term planning has certainly had ample time to plan a strategy to address the concerns of private ambulance operators, but it has instead squandered that time and brought the province to the brink of yet another avoidable crisis in our health system. The government's negligence and indifference is inexplicable and irresponsible. Do they even care?

[Press release, March 25, 2003]

Opposition Health critic Ross Wiseman said, “A PC Government would be handling the ambulance situation differently from the way the Grimes government has been handling it over the past two years.”

He said, “Not only was the current crisis foreseeable and preventable; in fact, the ambulance operators themselves – and I, as Health critic – were urging the government months ago to take proactive measures to avert the crisis before it even began. crisis management is no substitute for long-range planning and is no way to run a health system, yet it is the approach of choice for the Grimes government.”

[Press release, July 4, 2003]

“What's happening is this plan is another example of where we have short-term Band-aid solutions to what is a major crisis we are facing in long -term care,” Wiseman said.

“Transition beds ... are a stop-gap measure ... we find ourselves, as a province, witnessing one more time the consequence of a government that has demonstrated clearly that it reacts to crisis situations and has not over the past 10 years given adequate consideration to long-term planning.”

[Barb Sweet, St. John's Telegram, August 2, 2003]

Opposition Health critic Ross Wiseman says the ambulance situation is a crisis of the government's own making.

“Resolving this crisis will require more than changing a few items in a contract.”

[Press release, August 15, 2003]