Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 30, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 2024 A4 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I PROVINCIAL POLITICS Meet the new health-care excuses; same as the old ones I T feels like nothing has changed in health care since the NDP was elected to government nearly six months ago. Wait times for most surgical and diagnostic procedures continue to rise. Hospital congestion, including emer- gency room wait times, is still getting worse. It appears no progress has been made on solving the severe shortage of doctors, nurses and allied health-care workers. To be fair, the NDP has only had its hands on the levers of power for just over five months — hardly enough time to make significant inroads on anything in government, much less in health care. It takes months, some- times years, for new investments and policy changes to wind through the system. What is concerning, though, is there doesn’t seem to be a different approach to running health care than what exist- ed prior to the Oct. 3 election. Government “spokespeople” give the same tired answers to the same problems that have plagued the health system for years. There have been no structural changes made to the mul- tiple layers of bureaucracy that run hospitals, care homes and home care. Wait times for MRIs continue to rise, so much so that the Canadian Associ- ation of Medical Radiation Technolo- gists-Manitoba sounded the alarm bell Wednesday over growing delays for the scans. “Manitobans are waiting longer for MRIs, and chronic under-investments in health human resource planning is a big reason,” said Dayna McTaggart, the group’s provincial manager. Few would expect miracles from the NDP after less than six months in office. However, Premier Wab Kinew’s pledge to hire more health-care work- ers to chip away at those wait times doesn’t seem to be materializing. Both McTaggart’s group and the Manitoba Association of Health Care Profession- als said this week the government is not even posting the jobs to fill vacan- cies for MRI technologists. The government’s response is the same as it has been for years: an email statement from Shared Health, the faceless bureaucratic agency created by the former Tory government. “We appreciate that waiting for diag- nostic tests can be a stressful experi- ence, which is why work is underway to increase diagnostic capacity and lower wait times across the province,” a nameless Shared Health spokesper- son wrote in an email this week. The median wait time for an MRI in Manitoba was 20 weeks in 2023, up from 14 weeks in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It remained at 20 weeks in January, the most recent available data from the province on wait times. (The wait-time reporting lag of two to three months, sometimes longer, also hasn’t changed under the new government). Emergency room wait times have also grown under the NDP. Not much has changed in how government is responding to that, either. The NDP is peddling the same misinformation as the previous Tory government about how opening “minor injury clinics,” such as the one Kinew and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara unveiled in Brandon this week, will reduce ER wait times. Emergency department wait times are rising mainly because of a chronic shortage of staffed hospital beds on medical wards, not a lack of alterna- tive care for low-acuity patients. That has been confirmed ad nauseam by emergency room physicians and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. Despite that evidence, governments — including the NDP — continue to spread the falsehood that redirecting low-acuity patients from ERs to clinics will have a material impact on wait times. It never has before and there is no reason to believe it will in the future. Minor injury clinics do nothing to reduce the number of admitted, high-acuity patients languishing in ERs waiting days for a medical bed, which is the main wait-time driver. That was reiterated — again — in a comprehensive report released this week by the association of emergency physicians titled “EM: Power – the Future of Emergency Care.” “Research shows that the unbridled demand facing (emergency depart- ments) is not from too many non-ur- gent patients, but because of poor access to primary and specialty care, a rising burden of unmanaged chronic disease and — most importantly — a lack of hospital beds for admitted pa- tients,” the 328-page report says. Until the NDP starts doing things differently than previous governments, it’s unlikely much, if anything, will change in health care. tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca TOM BRODBECK OPINION Finance minister presents athletic footwear to health-care workers First budget running on respect I N a twist to a long-standing Can- adian tradition and a clear signal of his government’s spending prior- ities, Adrien Sala had new shoes Thurs- day, but he wasn’t wearing them. Manitoba’s finance minister, who will deliver the NDP government’s first budget Tuesday, presented the fresh footwear to five health-care workers at Victoria General Hospital. “What we want to do is really honour the work that health-care workers do and to recognize the importance of the work by instead of buying myself a pair of shoes, I want to buy you some shoes,” Sala told the employees, who included an urgent-care nurse, an occupational therapist and a health-care aide. “We think it’s important because the budget we’re bringing forward Tues- day is going to be very much focused on health care.” He acknowledged the province won’t be able to deliver right away on all of the promises the NDP made during last summer’s election campaign. There were a lot of them, including hiring hundreds of doctors and other front-line health workers, building a new personal-care home in Lac du Bonnet, getting a mobile MRI to serve northern Manitoba, establishing a universal school lunch program, con- verting 5,000 Manitoba homes from electric to geothermal heating and of- fering rebates on electric and hybrid vehicle purchases. “This budget is going to show prog- ress on the commitments we made in the election,” Sala told reporters. “It’s going to show responsible progress. We know we have to balance our fis- cal needs with priorities that we were sent to the legislature to deliver on, and that’s what Manitobans can expect here.” Last week, the finance minister an- nounced the province is in worse fiscal shape than anticipated and on track for a $1.9-billion deficit — more than five times the size of the $363-million short- fall anticipated in the Progressive Con- servatives’ 2023 budget. “We know the last government left a big fiscal mess,” Sala said. The government has hinted Tues- day’s budget will include an extension of the gas-tax holiday that started Jan. 1. A government source told The Can- adian Press the NDP is also eyeing changes to education taxes levied on property made by the previous govern- ment, charging higher income earners and owners of high-value homes more while offering a break to those earning less or in less expensive homes. The changes would move from the current 50 per cent rebate and a $350 credit to a single, flat credit. Some homeowners would pay less, some more, while government revenues would rise, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. That flat credit would be $1,500, effective in 2025, the CBC reported. Critics have said there’s no way the government can keep its promise to balance the budget in its first four years without cutting programs or rais- ing taxes. Sala said the NDP can and will stay on a “path to balance” in their first term. “I think we’re going to show that we can find that path, and it’s about re- sponsible decision-making, responsible budgeting — something that unfortu- nately we haven’t seen in some time,” he said. “We’re going to be bringing that for- ward. Its going to be a budget about health care, about making life more affordable in Manitoba while we ensure we take care of our fiscal needs.” The significance of his giving new athletic shoes to the hospital staff was important, the minister said. “We feel that for a long time, health- care workers in Manitoba haven’t been shown the respect that they deserve. We know how important of a role they play in delivering health care to Manitobans. Today is about honouring them.” What Sala called a “simple gesture” Thursday was a break with the unique- ly Canadian practice of finance min- isters wearing new shoes while deliv- ering their government’s budget. More recently, some have purchased footwear for others before budget day as an indication of what’s in the docu- ment. In 2023, Progressive Conservative fi- nance minister Cliff Cullen bought two pairs of winter boots for members of the Downtown Community Safety Part- nership to distribute to people without proper cold-weather footwear. He went on to announce $3.6 million in funding for the non-profit organization in the Tories’ budget. In 2022, his predecessor, Cameron Friesen, filled shoeboxes with person- al items to be donated to Ukrainians in Manitoba who had fled their war-torn homeland. — With files from Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca CAROL SANDERS BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS Arnell Ramos (left), who works at the Victoria General Hospital, received shoes from provincial Finance Minister Adrien Sala as part of a pre-budget event Thursday at the Winnipeg hospital. The province is tearing up Manitobans’ paper health cards. “It’s 2024 — your health cover- age shouldn’t rely on a torn, ripped-up health card,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said in a statement Thursday. “Our budget will bring Mani- toba into the 21st century with a plastic card and a digital option. It just makes sense.” The NDP government’s first budget is being released Tuesday. Finance Minister Adrien Sala would not say what the cards will cost, but earlier this month the government admitted that plas- tic proof-of-immunization cards issued during the COVID-19 pan- demic cost $1.67 each, compared to eight cents for a paper family health card. The government issued 1.25 million vaccination cards. Darlene Jackson, president of the 12,000 member Manitoba Nurses Union, said the switch is long overdue. “Plastic cards are a great idea. The paper health cards are very long past their best-use date. The numbers fade and they tear. They need to be shown at every appointment, and every time you pull it out they wear,” she said. Health cards are a better in- vestment than the limited-use immunization cards were, Jack- son said. “You’ll use the health card for the rest of your life. These are more long-term.” Details about the material and design will be shared in the com- ing months, and the cards are ex- pected to be released sometime next year, the province said. The move is also part of a larger investment to move the health-care system away from paper and fax machines and to- wards electronic patient records. “Manitobans have been very vocal about the need to make improvements and we have heard them,” Kinew said. The government will be also be reviewing the application process to make it easier for Manitobans to apply for their first health card or make a change to an existing one, the release said. And, faced with a long backlog of issuing health cards, the gov- ernment has committed to a two- week service standard for new health card applications. “After years of stories from Manitobans waiting months and months for a health card to ar- rive … the government more than doubled staffing capacity to speed up processing times and eliminate a backlog of more than 24,000 applications,” a statement said. A hotline has been created — 204-786-7101 or 1-800-392-1207 — and support staff added to deal with inquiries. kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca Plastic health cards coming KEVIN ROLLASON ;