The mini-hospitals promised by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) will ultimately be focused exclusively on the care of seniors to treat minor health problems. They will not have operating theaters and patients will not be able to go there directly.
The government now wants to use it to “deal with the aging of the population” and relieve emergency room congestion, announced the office of Minister of Health Christian Dubé on Wednesday morning.
Halfway between the family medicine group (GMF) and the hospital, this new type of establishment will only offer short-term care. Patients will not be able to go there themselves, but must be referred by emergency or 811.
During a brief press scrum, MP Youri Chassin, who is bringing the matter to the government, stressed that the care provided there would be “free” even if they were private clinics.
If the government has decided to develop them privately rather than publicly, it is because construction can be done “more quickly,” Minister Dubé also indicated.
As for the staff, they will come from the private sector as well as from the public network as in a GMF, he maintained. “Sometimes, we have staff who are provided by the network and then sometimes, it is staff who are hired directly by the doctors.”
Modeled on the Up clinics and Jeffery Hale
These new clinics are inspired by the pilot project launched in the Jeffery Hale emergency room in 2022. This service dedicated to orphan patients and the elderly is open 7 days a week and is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The evening.
Minister Dubé also says he relied on the Up private pediatric clinics in Saint-Eustache and Brossard, which the State used to relieve emergency room congestion in the Laurentians.
Calls for tenders to develop two first mini-hospitals must be launched by the end of the month to open one in the Quebec region and a second in Montreal.
Contrary to what was announced in 2023, the Quebec facility will not be specialized in pediatric care.
This announcement was strongly denounced by the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), which sees it as an “about-face” on the part of the government. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) committed to creating two private mini-hospitals during the mandate during the 2022 electoral campaign.
The PCQ hoped that mini-hospitals would pave the way for greater openness in private health care.
He wants private hospitals to be allowed to welcome patients without restrictions in terms of number of beds, length of hospitalization and types of care.