For-profit surgery contract will make health care crisis worse, not better
December 16, 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For-profit surgery contract will make health care crisis worse, not better
Today’s announcement from the Houston government announcing the contracting out of some surgeries to a for-profit clinic is an attack on public healthcare that will do nothing to improve access to care in the short or long-term, warned the Nova Scotia Health Coalition, a non-partisan health care advocacy organization.
The Coalition is concerned that the crisis in healthcare is being used to further entrench for-profit, privatized health care in Nova Scotia at the expense of the public, universal system. The move to expand for-profit surgeries comes six months after an election which the Progressive Conservatives ran on expanding the use of public operating rooms. Their platform made no mention of the privatization of surgeries.
“This plan not only fails to address the major drivers of surgical wait times, it also manages to exacerbate those problems by taking people and resources out of the public health care system and giving them to a private, for-profit corporation,” said Chris Parsons, Provincial Coordinator of the Coalition.
The major constraint on surgical capacity in Nova Scotia is a staffing shortage, not facilities. While Scotia Surgery operates surgical facilities, they have no means of providing additional staffing outside what is already available in Nova Scotia. Instead, private clinics compete with the public system for staff, making the problem worse.
“Every nurse or other health care professionals working at a private surgical clinic is one less worker working in the public health care system,” added Parsons. “There is a finite pool of staff in this province and private clinics simply draw staff from that pool.”
In addition, these sorts of short-term, private solutions do nothing to build the long-term capacity of the surgical system in Nova Scotia. If there is a shortage of equipment or facilities then public money should be spent on investing in the public system so that the problem can be addressed permanently.
The Coalition is calling for further investment in the public system and the introduction of organizational measures to maximize and increase surgical capacity including expanding the use of centralized referrals, creating a workforce development plan, and expanding community-based rehab and prehab clinics.
Scotia Surgery is a privately owned company that operates a private, for-profit surgical clinic in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Surgeons in the public healthcare system first began performing publicly insured surgeries at the clinic in 2008 when the Progressive Conservative government signed the first contract between the province and Scotia Surgery Inc.
In April 2021 one of Scotia Surgery’s corporate directors and a dental surgeon at two dental surgery clinics which operate out of the Scotia Surgery facility, Louis Bourget, was charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon in Gander, Newfoundland for allegedly allowing a prison guard to perform oral surgery on a sedated prisoner while another prison guard recorded the assault and posted a video to social media. Bourget’s license to practice was temporarily suspended by the Provincial Dental Board of Nova Scotia and he admitted to “unprofessional conduct, infamous conduct, and breach of, or failure to, observe the Code of Ethics.”
Media contact:
Chris Parsons, Provincial Coordinator, Nova Scotia Health Coalition
(902) 880-8628
coordinator@nshealthcoalition.ca
The Nova Scotia Health Coalition is a political but non-partisan organization committed to defending, strengthening and extending public health care.
Additional information:
Reducing Surgical Wait Times by Andrew Longhurst, Marcy Cohen, and Margaret McGregor, CCPA-BC.
“Newfoundland correctional officers, Nova Scotia dentist charged with assaulting inmate in Gander last year,” https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/local/newfoundland-correctional-officers-nova-scotia-dentist-charged-with-assaulting-inmate-in-gander-last-year-549252/
“Halifax-area dentist facing assault charges in N.L. has licence suspension lifted,” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/louis-bourget-dentist-assault-inmate-1.5997692