The plan to overhaul the health system unveiled Tuesday by the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, hardly surprised Michel Clair, who had chaired the Study Commission on health services and social services in 2000.
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“Generally speaking, Mr. Dubé’s plan takes up recommendations that we made 21 years ago, and many of those made by other groups that have looked at ways to reform the health”, noted Mr. Clair at the microphone of QUB Radio on Wednesday morning.
If he is encouraged by the “ambitious plan” of the CAQ, the one who was a minister in various departments under the Lévesque government in the 1980s, however, believes that the Ministry of Health will have to be whipped to get it to change. .
“The Ministry of Health, if there is one thing that it has proven, it is that it is incapable of effecting change in a short time,” Mr. Clair launched.
“It’s going to take advice or strategic intervention groups formed, yes of people from the government, but also of people who know the field to push for the implementation and make things happen,” he said. for follow-up.
The latter gave the example of recommendations made in 2000, such as the creation of family medicine groups, which are still slow to be deployed.
However, the CAQ has a “big advantage” over its predecessors; its Minister of Health and Social Services, from the business community. “It makes me hope that Mr. Dubé will look at other implementation methods than relying on a bureaucratic machine,” said Mr. Clair.
“I have nothing against doctors – on the contrary, I appreciate them – but at the head of the Ministry of Health, in the last twenty years, we have had above all doctors who, in terms of management, are very conditioned by what they know of the health network”, he added in reference to the many doctors who led the ministry.
Mr. Clair also says he is in favor of decentralizing health decision-making. “Let’s imagine for 30 seconds that the Ministry of Natural Resources would operate all the mines, the electricity and gas transport networks. You would say “you are sick”, “he sneered to illustrate his point by emphasizing that in his opinion, a ministry is there, above all, to decide on the objectives to be achieved.