By Trevor Greenway
The head of the region’s health authority says that if the government built its “mega-hospital” today, it wouldn’t be able to operate it.
This is because there aren’t enough doctors, nurses or medical technicians to run the facility.
On Oct. 14 the CAQ government officially announced its plan to build a 600-bed “mega-hospital” in Gatineau by 2030.
Speaking with the Low Down two weeks after that announcement, Marc Bilodeau, the CEO of Outaouais Integrated Health and Social Services Centre CISSSO said, while a new hospital is a boon for the region, there is plenty of work to be done to recruit, train and build incentives for healthcare workers to stay in the Outaouais before a new hospital can be staffed.
“That’s the reality; we just don’t have the people. We need them to build a plan, and a plan would take, most likely, 10 years to deliver,” he said, putting the responsibility on the CAQ government.
Bilodeau explained that recruitment isn’t immediate because education programs take time to build and several years for students to complete. He said the Outaouais is graduating its first cohort of doctors from the McGill campus in Gatineau, which opened four years ago. Those 23 students will start their residency in the Outaouais this summer, said Bilodeau. He added that, since the campus opened in 2020, they have been increasing the number of medical school spots, with the latest class up to 38 students.
“There is going to be an increasing number of new doctors that will have been trained in Outaouais, which means that they know the area, they know the territory and they probably have started to build some roots here,” said Bilodeau.
He explained that CISSSO has created a recruitment committee to figure out ways of how best to recruit and retain medical professionals.
“We need to figure out how we can support new, potential doctors and new families coming on board. How can we support them with lodging, daycare and so on, so that we facilitate their integration, and they are more likely to stay,” he said.
Bilodeau said he is aware, though, that without salary parity with Ontario healthcare positions, it will always be a challenge to keep workers in the region. He said the biggest challenge is in the medical technicians department, as those workers can make upwards of $30,000 more in Ontario than they do in Quebec.
The CISSSO tried to combat this last summer when it pressured the government to give $22,000 bonuses to medical technicians to stay in hospitals in the Outaouais. While the bonuses did help retain staff at Wakefield and Shawville, Bilodeau said it’s a “short-term fix.”
He said that salaries for nurses and doctors are somewhat comparable with Ontario, but he added that the real discrepancy comes on the medical technician side – radiologists, MRI technicians and ultrasound experts. Bilodeau said salary parity should be a “key element” in the government’s retention strategy.
The opening of a new “mega-hospital” raises questions about what will happen to local hospital services, namely smaller hospitals like those in Wakefield and Shawville. In its Oct. 14 announcement, the CAQ government didn’t include a cost, timeline or location, and said the new hospital’s aim is to centralize specialized workers in one large facility to service the Outaouais region. The official press release stated that local services would be “completely reorganized.”
Pontiac MNA André Fortin told the Low Down that “everyone should be worried about the future services in Wakefield.”
“It is formally written in the CISSSO’s clinical plan that once the new Hull Hospital opens, the Wakefield Hospital will become a geriatric readaptation facility,” said Fortin. “The CISSSO’s own official documents show that the hospital will lose its ‘hospital’ vocation. But Wakefield needs a functional emergency room, it needs frontline services, it needs care units, it needs a hospital.”
Bilodeau told the Low Down that the Wakefield Hospital is not under threat of closing but that the next few years will be key in finding out what users need the hospital to be. With the needs of the population changing, he said his next few years of work will be focused on finding out what those needs are and fighting to keep those services intact.
“Is it going to remain as is?” asked Bilodeau about the future of the Wakefield Hospital. “Is it going to transfer to something a bit different, because we know we’re still going to need care in that area, but what care will be required?”
Marcel Chartrand, spokesperson for Vigi Santé, a health watchdog group in the Outaouais, said that the government has spent $15 million over the last few years bringing in extra doctors and nurses to help out in the region, and he wondered how the government is going to staff a new 600-bed hospital. He said hospital emergency rooms in Hull and Gatineau are operating between 25 and 40 per cent capacity.
“That’s the million dollar question,” Chartrand told the Low Down when asked who will staff the new hospital. “We have three openings in Wakefield for doctors, and another one, Dr. Menard, [who] announced his retirement last week or the week before, so that will be four, and we can’t replace them.”
Chartrand said that his organization was assured that services at the Wakefield Hospital would not be diminished when the government builds its new hospital.