while the covid-19 pandemic highlighted many of the deficiencies in quebec’s health-care system, it also showed the system is capable of massive, rapid transformation under duress, and that wide-scale collaboration among its thousands of employees and institutions is possible.
“it was difficult,” health minister christian dubé said. “but at the same time, our network proved during those two years that we were capable of small miracles.” he pointed to the province’s successful vaccination campaign and the health system’s ability to shift to telemedicine as examples.
on tuesday dubé presented his government’s proposal
to reform quebec’s health-care system, spurred in part both by its successes during the pandemic and its failings, including an acute labour shortage, inadequate care for seniors and outdated data storage and information technologies.
the main goals are to bring improved health care to citizens “who deserve better,” dubé said, and to improve working conditions for its more than 300,000 employees so that health care becomes the type of profession to which quebec workers flock rather than flee.
chief among the government’s reforms is the promise to provide rapid front-line health-care services to citizens, more than a million of whom cannot find access to family doctors. to do so, the government is promising to expand its fledgling “front-line telephone access portal,” a phone or online service through which citizens can gain access to a health professional at one of the province’s family medicine groups, where doctors, nurses, social workers and mental health professionals are promised to be available.