Manitoba’s new regional health authorities will spend the next year talking to people to find out what health-care services they need.
As of April 1, regional boards took control over how health money from the provincial and federal governments is spent in their
areas.
While rural residents won’t immediately notice any changes, they’ll have the chance to tell boards what they want to see in the future.
The boards have been working for the past year to learn what it takes to plan and manage health-care services. They’ve hired chief executive officers, many of whom have been through the regionalization process in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
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They’ve also been meeting with hospitals, personal care homes and ambulance services to get them signed on to the regionalization process. Now, they are planning to start community needs assessments.
“We want to talk to all of the players, all of the constituents in the region, not just the special interest groups,” said Edward Bergen, chair of the regional board for the Interlake.
“We have no intention to rush foolishly ahead without appropriately and properly doing a needs assessment and finding out what it is that people really need out here,” he said.
Bill Bryant, chair of the regional board for southwestern Manitoba, said it’s hard to set goals until the boards know what services are being provided and where there are gaps.
Bryant’s region includes more than 36,000 people, 19 hospitals and personal care homes, and stretches from the Saskatchewan border to Treherne, Man. This year’s budget is around $40 million.
“We have such a big region and it’s a rural region and people are scattered throughout the region,” Bryant said, noting communication will be a big challenge.
Bryant’s board sent out the first in a series of newsletters last week to let residents know what’s happening. He said it was directed to health-care workers who will now be employees of the regional health authority rather than individual hospitals or the provincial government.
His board is using district health councils to stay aware of residents’ health concerns. The southwest region will have up to four councils with 15 members on each.
In the Interlake, people are used to the concept of regional planning for health care. Bergen said residents formed the Interlake Health Association three years ago.
“It very much spoke to many of the same issues that we’ll be dealing with,” Bergen said.
His board plans a toll-free number in the region so residents have only one place to call whether they want to reach a social worker or a clinic.
Bergen said the biggest hurdle for his board will be getting people to practise preventative health care.
“I think the challenges will be educating the communities to focus more on wellness than sickness, preventions as opposed to cures, healthy lifestyles instead of operations, exercises instead of heart attacks,” he said.
Bryant said finding more doctors for rural areas will continue to be a challenge.
“That’s always going to be a struggle, to get physicians to relocate to the rural areas and hopefully to have them stay there for a while too.”
