Emergencies closed due to lack of personnel, patients who travel by rowboat, hours of travel to be covered for five-minute tests… the list of issues raised by elected officials on the North Coast is long.
The Assembly of the MRCs of the Côte-Nord asks the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, to create a regional health working table. Elected officials want to avoid the deterioration of services that they consider “well and truly underway”.
They believe that this table would allow better consultation to face the various issues. A letter claiming it was sent to Minister Dubé and the Minister responsible for the Côte-Nord, Jonatan Julien, following a meeting held in Sept-Îles on Tuesday.
Although aware of the problems of attracting and retaining labor, Assembly members feel that the controversial Barrette reform has created chaos in the region’s health system.
“Before the Barrette reform, the communities were more involved with, as a result, a better understanding of the actions implemented by the establishments. Today, we are looking for the common thread and, sincerely, the only consensus that emerges is that of the deterioration of services, ”lamented Martin Saint-Laurent, president of the Assembly of the MRCs of the North Shore.
The elected officials, however, do not wish to fall into the accusations and rather offer an approach that has already proven its worth in the regional workforce. In 2014, a regional table identified solutions to counter the low recruitment of local workers on sites in the North Shore.
“It feels like we are reliving Groundhog Day and, in the end, it is the most vulnerable in our communities who pay the price. People came out of the regional workforce table with convincing results for our workers. Why not give it a try in Health? », Affirmed Micheline Anctil, prefect of the MRC of the Haute Côte-Nord.
We would like to use the same tool in health to first build consensus on the current situation and then work on the implementation of sustainable solutions.
“We will have to discuss solutions upstream of emergency closures, there are things that we see coming from afar, so why not try to unite our efforts? Is it just a question of cost savings? “, Asked the prefect of the MRC of Sept-Rivières, Alain Thibault.
The Lower North Shore even more critical
In the Lower North Shore, Randy Jones believes that the state of the system is already having repercussions on the health of residents, who, due to lack of services, do not always receive the care they really need.
In recent weeks, the sector has been the subject of several service cuts, due to the lack of nursing staff.
Not to mention that the residents of the villages are at the mercy of Mother Nature for their travels.
“If someone is sick, wants to get out of here (La Tabatière) and there is fog, he must take a rowboat to go to Saint-Augustin to reach the airport and be able to get out. by plane ”, illustrated Randy Jones, prefect of the MRC du Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent.
