Healthcare asked to squeeze out $1B
Quebec’s healthcare institutions are being asked by the new health boss to squeeze out a billion in expenses without affecting services. Le Devoir’s interview with the head of the new CAQ health bureaucracy reveals more about how she plans to do this.
La Presse also examines a growing chain of clinics that mix public and private in new ways.
Uatu 10:28 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
Yawn. More budget cuts. It’s like a broken record. They should just come out and say that we have two choices: 1- Don’t get sick, 2- Become a millionaire. That’s the crux of it.
rob 11:17 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
We need to find a way to stop public clinics from charging additional fees as though they were a private clinic.
(At a a necessary checkup with my family doctor, he took a biopsy for a test he considered important. On the way out, while making my followup appointment the secretary asked me to pay a 5$ `transportation fee to bring the sample to the labratory`… as though this type of transportation was a new thing and a private service. I told them to charge it to my RAMQ card, which she didn`t protest to. On my way home they left me a voice message reminding me that the fee had to be paid and that they took cc over the phone. No I didn`t call her back. I’ll find out in a few months if they threw my samples in the trash. It`s just extortion at this point. 5$ today, 50$ by new year. 500$ the next and soon we.ll have AI surge pricing based on your analitycs bleeding us into perpetual poverty.
The government should have never allowed private healthcare in canada. IMHO it’s anticonstitutaional.
rob 11:22 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
If they can get the english universities to over charge foreign students to subidize the french universities – maybe we can get the private healthcare to use the same structure to subidize the public.
You’d like a MRI at a private clinic? – well that will be the usual 700$ fee, plus a 700$ subsidy to the private sector for a total of 1400$. Those that can afford will pay it – and the rest can will take their money and benefit from it too. Yes it`ll cut into doctor profits and make doctors reconsider going private.
jeather 11:27 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
Do you know what would save money? Preventative care.
rob 12:31 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
Geneviève Biron, PDG de Santé Québec`s, late father was Denis Biron – founder of Biron Groupe Santé (a private company in the health care with over 150 million in annual revenue). Geneviève was president from 2014 to 2022 when her sister Caroline took over.
Let the private company enjoy it`s nepotism, but it`s just naive to ignore the conflict of interest in her government appointed role.
Kevin 16:04 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
I’m sure there are efficiencies because healthcare administration is 70 years of kludge upon kludge. (I don’t understand why some hospitals still insist upon issuing their own ID cards to patients…)
But there’s a whole lot of government- and business-imposed nonsense as well.
We shouldn’t have multiple systems for checking exam results. We shouldn’t have central committees deciding who gets to work where. We should all have a better sense of where to go for the kind of treatment we need.
Nicholas 17:15 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
The hospital cards are weird, not a thing I’ve seen elsewhere (not that I’ve been to too many hospitals outside Quebec). They’re being phased out (the CHUM just uses RAMQ, and with a scan of the barcode can pull up your file). It was nice to see an appointment recently where they got a blood test result directly from Carnet Santé, though I had already printed it out.
Chris 23:33 on 2024-11-13 Permalink
>Do you know what would save money? Preventative care.
Not necessarily. It’s not so simple.
Kate 10:23 on 2024-11-14 Permalink
That is one paper, Chris, and it’s the kind of position that may have political bias embedded in it.
jeather 11:06 on 2024-11-14 Permalink
That’s also using a more field specific definition of preventative. (Among other things, I don’t think treatment for a condition you already have is preventative — it stops it getting worse, presumably, but that’s not the general use of the term.)
I’d love to find a well researched article showing how the health care system spends money — in particular on the new centralized testing/referral system, but also on the regularly increasing bureaucratic systems. (There has to be some spent on that, obviously, but I bet we could make a lot of cost savings there.)
MarcG 11:37 on 2024-11-14 Permalink
Maybe encouraging the population to be repeatedly infected with a virus known to cause damage to the lungs, heart, brain, kidneys, and blood vessels isn’t such a great idea after all.
Kate 00:14 on 2024-11-15 Permalink
I was at a dinner party Thursday evening with about a dozen people. I was the only person there who hadn’t had Covid, and most had had it more than once.
GC 08:50 on 2024-11-15 Permalink
I’m pretty sure I finally had Covid last month. Lots of people kept asking me how it compared to “the other times I had it”, because most people just assume you’ve had it by now.
Also, saving money isn’t the *only* reason to engage in preventative care. Though, I suppose if you are trying to run healthcare as a business then that’s going to be your focus.
Kate 09:29 on 2024-11-15 Permalink
GC, yes. Quality of life, also longevity, should be more important metrics. Not longevity for its own sake either, but helping people to benefit from optimum health for the extent of their lives. But the original post was about money, so…