The Ministry of Health’s dashboard contains “implausibilities” in waiting times in psychiatry. The ministry recognizes that its data has its limitations, but continues to display it as is without indicating it.
On Wednesday, the table listed 13 people waiting to see a psychiatrist in Montreal, all CIUSSS combined. This is five times less than in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine.
As of January 27, however, there were nearly 2,000 patients waiting in Mauricie and Center-du-Québec, or a third of the list for all of Quebec.
In the Laval, Lanaudière and Laurentides regions, 25 patients were registered on the waiting list, according to the dashboard.
“It’s a joke,” said the president of the Association of Psychiatrists of Quebec, Claire Gamache, who works at the CISSS de Laval.
In his eyes, it is “impossible” and “implausible” that this portrait reflects reality. Rather, she believes that the people waiting number in the “thousands” in the 450, especially since these regions are struggling with a shortage of psychiatrists.
In his opinion, the table should indicate that the data is not available rather than displaying it.
Launched in 2022 by Minister Christian Dubé, the ministry’s dashboard lists the number of Quebecers waiting for a consultation in all medical specialties for each region.
The dashboards are the pride of the Coalition Avenir Québec government. After his colleagues from Health and Housing, it was the turn of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, to launch his on Monday. “It will allow us to have much better informed management. Better information equals better decisions,” he declared during question period on Tuesday.
“We must remain cautious in interpretation”
Questioned about the reliability of information relating to psychiatry, the Ministry of Health indicated to the Duty that the data was “good”, but argued that it was not counted the same way everywhere.
“The situation is particular with regard to psychiatry,” wrote spokesperson Marie-Pierre Blier. “We must remain cautious in interpreting the results,” she also mentioned on Tuesday.
The mechanics are complicated since there are two mental health access points: the Service Request Dispatch Center (CRDS) — used by all specialties — and the Adult Mental Health Access Point (GASMA).
The ministry maintains that the dashboard figures are lower in Montreal because the CIUSSS can remove patients’ names from waiting lists when they are referred to the GASMA.
And this, even if we do not know when the patients will subsequently be treated. “This explains the low number of pending requests at the CRDS for Montreal,” added M.me Blier.
If we rely on the dashboard, the number of people waiting to see a psychiatrist in Montreal increased from 2,900 to 279 in one month, between October and November 2022.
The general director of the Community Mental Health Network, Sylvain Dubé, sees it as an enterprise aimed at hiding reality. “Clearly it can’t be. […] It’s aesthetic work to try to meet targets. »
“There are people on the waiting list, because they have been there for a long time, we call them to offer them something else and so that they have services while waiting. There, they enter service trajectories temporarily and we will remove them from the waiting list. »
Back and forth between the ministry and the CISSS-CIUSSS
“To consult data that would be more meaningful in relation to mental health and allowing interregional comparisons”, The duty should obtain the data from each of the GASMA by contacting the CISSS and CIUSSS, the Ministry of Health recommended.
The spokesperson also mentioned that the department was “in the process of reassessing the way we do things with the CRDS in order to promote uniformity of the data that appears on the dashboard.”
Following his suggestion, The duty requested all the CISSS and CIUSSS in order to have good data from the GASMA. However, one after the other, they sent it back in writing… to the ministry’s dashboard.
Two of the five CIUSSS of Montreal (West-Central Montreal and South-Central Montreal) finally provided new data this week. Together, they counted 356 people waiting, 27 times more than the island-wide dashboard shows.
As for the impressive data from Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec, the local CIUSSS does not question them either. Sylvain Dubé thinks that this region is probably doing a “more realistic job” of collecting data than the others, if the results are anything to go by.
He also says he has no reason to believe that the situation is much more dramatic than in other regions in terms of mental health waiting times. “If that were the case, I would know,” he assures.