(Quebec) While the network reaches a “turning point” with the creation of Santé Québec, Minister Christian Dubé must take advantage of this to adopt a “Health Plan 2.0” focused on reducing disease, believes the Association for public health of Quebec (ASPQ).
“We are in a rather exceptional moment in the history of health in Quebec,” underlines the general director of the ASPQ, Thomas Bastien.
Quebec is preparing to split the imposing Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) with the creation of Santé Québec, a state corporation which will supervise the entire operational aspect of the health network. The Ministry will be able to concentrate on strategic planning and the definition of major directions.
The ASPQ sees this as an opportunity for the MSSS to increase its efforts for the prevention and reduction of disease with “the void that the creation of Santé Québec will leave within the Ministry”.
“Mr. Dubé’s current plan is really a plan to support patients in the health system, it fits very well with Santé Québec […] but we have the opportunity at the moment to adopt a parallel plan linked to the reduction of the disease, which is very complementary and which could have significant impacts,” argues Mr. Bastien.
The ASPQ also announces the creation of a Quebec Coalition for the Reduction of Disease whose primary objective is to ask the Legault government to “recognize that the reduction of disease is one of the pillars of a [réseau] more efficient, more humane and more resilient”.
We are also demanding that Quebec develop a strategic plan for disease reduction, a sort of “Health Plan 2.0”.
The National Assembly had also adopted a motion in 2022 to “make public health a priority in overhauling the health system”.
New indicators
The Coalition – which is made up of groups representing patients, medical associations and professional orders – also proposes to the Minister of Health to add new performance indicators to its dashboard to “observe the disease and its reduction”.
“We have a certain number of diseases that are present in Quebec, we need a clear picture, to have key indicators that would allow us to reduce the number of patients,” maintains Mr. Bastien. This could be an indicator of whether smoking affects lung cancer, for example.
As the Girard budget approaches, the ASPQ is once again calling for an increase in public health funding by an additional billion per year.
The Association emphasizes in its pre-budget submission that “investments in public health are less than 3% of health spending in Quebec while the Canadian average is greater than 5%.”
In her report on care and services for seniors during the pandemic, tabled in January 2022, the Commissioner of Health and Well-being, Joanne Castonguay, noted that Quebec is one of the states that spends the least per capita in public health. According to this report, the Legault government invested a sum of 235.9 million over four years to “enhance preventive health interventions”.