This morning, government released Premier Wynne’s mandate letters to her Ministers, and the Health Minister spoke at the annual NPAO conference. Key points for members below. Government’s top 10 overall priorities included one health item:
- “Building a health care system everyone can rely on by improving the availability of same-day, after-hours and weekend care, and continuing to grow the number of frontline workers providing the care people want in home and community settings.”
The Health Minister’s mandate letter re-stated this. In addition, his list includes:
- Ensuring that patients who want a primary care provider have one.
- Implementing the expanded scope of practice of registered nurses to allow them to prescribe some medications directly to patients.
- Ensuring, as you work to improve access to services, that a focus on equity of access is reflected in solutions.
The letter also lists “key results” that have been achieved, including:
- Provided support and stability to the health care workforce, including funding to improve primary care recruitment and retention of nurses and other interdisciplinary team members.
While this was promised in the Ontario Budget last February, it has not yet been “provided”. Interprofessional primary care organizations are awaiting their funding letters, which the Minister must sign in order for the dollars to actually flow. On this last point, the Minister told the NPAO audience, “You’ve been waiting a long time.” Speaking about the funding letters, he said three things:
- “We’re very close.”
- “When the dollars do flow, it will be retroactive to April 1.”
- “It will be in weeks, not months.”
The senior leaders of all three associations, AFHTO, AOHC and NPAO, have been pressing the Minister and his office to give urgency to this. Needless to say, the Minister and NDP Health Critic France Gelinas, who was in the audience, heard this again this morning. The three associations subsequently issued a news release.