Author: The Record
Published November 7, 2023

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

Local health authority, the CIUSSS de L’Estrie – CHUS (CdeE), detailed the positives and negatives of its annual report online over Facebook Nov. 2 through Dr. Stéphane Tremblay, its President General Director. Tremblay answered questions from the media and interested viewers after his presentation.

The CdeE has 1,084 hospital beds, 2,340 long-term care and retirement home beds, and more than 100 points of service serving the 507,208 residents of the region. The CdeE employs a team of over 20,000 people, including over 1,500 doctors and pharmacists, around 500 researchers and over 700 volunteers.

The 2022-2023 year (ending in March) had its positives and negatives. There are still things to work on, but they are proud of what they improved, said Tremblay.

This past year, the CdeE added 244,837 hours of service, for a total of 1,843,138, serving 26,567 people compared to 25,718 in the previous year.

In the area of mental health, 269 less people were put on a waiting list for the appropriate services – 1,489 compared to 1,758 last year. This was accomplished by using new practices, and often with the help of related community organizations.

For those struggling with addiction, 3,543 were served – slightly more than the 3,532 served the previous year.

While the population of the region is growing rapidly, the number of family doctors is not keeping pace. Some 347,640 people are registered with a family doctor, down from 360,302 last year. Citizens are moving to other options, like nurse practitioners, to fulfill their frontline medical needs.

Residential services for the intellectually and physically disabled, and those on the autism spectrum, have risen from 991 to 1,059.

The waiting list for non-emergency surgeries, with a six month or above wait time, has gone down to 4,179 from 4,992. After the pandemic, there were thousands more on their waiting lists than previously, and urgent surgeries must take precedence, but the situation is improving, Tremblay insisted. Often, they will offer such surgeries at an alternative hospital with a different surgeon, and they strongly suggest the client agrees for the sake of overall efficiency. He emphasized that all their staff are competent, so the choice is not a “complex” one to make.

All of this is possible because of their personnel, Tremblay noted, though he admitted there are not always enough to meet all the needs of the population. They are improving on this front, with CdeE employees having a 90.45 per cent presence rate last year, slightly up from the 90.17 per cent rate of the previous year.

The CdeE has put in place numerous new activities to improve the overall health of employees involving movement, meditation, and relaxation under the consultation of experts on health and wellbeing. They aim to have their employees “happy at work”. Tremblay has visited many of the CdeE’s points of service over the past year and has personally seen employees “engaged, dynamic and full of ideas”.

They have measured the job satisfaction of their employees in the spring of 2022 and the fall of 2023. The most recent results will come in within the next few days and allow them to improve work conditions further.

Last year, the CdeE recruited 3,063 new members to their team. The CdeE offers a very interesting professional experience, Tremblay stated, and presents its employees with a wealth of possibilities.

The CdeE has recently founded a retirement home in Sherbrooke that began taking clients in Nov. 2022. Work is ongoing to add new homes in Magog, Granby, Coaticook and Lac-Mégantic. A new building in its Fleurimont Hospital, named ‘Pavillon Enfant Soleil’, a “mother-child” centre, will open its doors in Sept. 2025.

This year, the CdeE’s budget amounted to $2.2 billion, with a $5.1 million surplus.

The provincial government has ruled that by Oct. 2025, the CdeE must phase out its use of independent workers. This will require many administrative steps, Tremblay explained, and they may ask “non-traditional” professions to aid in their “change of modality”. Another way of serving more people is expanding their virtual services, he added. It will not be easy, he said, for the needs of the population are changing and they must respond. They have proven they can function without independent workers in the past, he noted.

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