No North Coast patient will be transferred outside the region as was likely to happen next Sunday. At one minute to midnight, the CISSS de la Côte-Nord announced the arrival of reinforcements to compensate for the lack of manpower created by the new rules governing the use of employment agencies.
“North Shore residents will remain on the North Shore,” declared the CEO of the CISSS de la Côte-Nord, Manon Asselin, during the public meeting of the establishment’s board of directors on Wednesday.
Thanks to private contracts, the CISSS managed to urgently recruit around fifty resources, including 36 beneficiary attendants and 5 nurses, she explained.
Seven employees from the Institute of Cardiology and Pneumology of Quebec (IUCPQ) and around twenty from the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-Montréal are also expected to lend a hand in the coming days.
Result: the anticipated closure of around forty hospital beds at the Le Royer hospital in Baie-Comeau and at the Sept-Îles hospital was finally canceled. Same thing at the Forestville and Escoumins emergency rooms, which can remain open at night.
According to our information, the start of the transfer of patients from the North Shore to other establishments in the network was to begin on Wednesday.
A temporary solution
But this solution seems very temporary while the CISSS is still looking for 36 nurses and 80 beneficiary attendants to meet future needs. “It’s certain that it remains fragile and we may have to make transfers in the coming weeks if we are not able to obtain our optimal thresholds,” admitted Manon Asselin.
The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, confirmed on Wednesday that he was working on “other solutions at the moment”. The access coordinator, Michel Delamarre, appointed by Quebec in the fall of 2023, during the emergency crisis, went to the North Shore “in order to support the teams on site as much as possible and to accelerate the implementation of solutions”.
“I would like to sincerely thank the managers and teams on the ground who are mobilized to continue to offer services to the population in these difficult circumstances,” the minister continued in a statement on X.
On Wednesday, the situation continued to evolve hour by hour on the North Shore, we were told. Patients could have been moved by ambulance or by air, with the medical evacuation service, EVAC.
The region having natural links with the Capitale-Nationale for obtaining health services and care, the CHU de Québec – Université Laval indicated to The Press that he was “mobilized in solidarity”.
“We are currently working in close collaboration with the various teams on the ground. We already have volunteers who have expressed their interest and we are continuing our efforts to provide significant help to our colleagues,” writes the establishment.
A “precipitous crisis”
The company Paraxion, which offers an ambulance service on the North Shore, also confirmed having received “the request to add additional resources to specific service points to allow optimal coverage.”
“For several days now, we have been working closely and actively together [avec le CISSS de la Côte-Nord] in order to agree on a plan to maintain the safety net of the population.
Around twenty doctors sounded the alarm earlier this week in a letter sent to The Press. They accused the Legault government of plunging the health network “into a precipitous” and “unprecedented” crisis.
At issue: a vast reorganization of the CISSS de la Côte-Nord to compensate for the departure of employees from private employment agencies. Departures due to the entry into force of a first mammoth contract limiting the use of placement agencies across the health network.
Since April 14, Quebec has capped the rates paid to agencies per job title. The government has also tightened rules surrounding the award of contracts by mutual agreement. This leaves little room for maneuver for establishments in remote regions, such as the CISSS de la Côte-Nord, where dependence on agencies is enormous.