 Just prior to Christmas 2025, a lady passed away who I would describe as one of the strong, original advocates of Health and Long-Term Care Reform. Shirley Giberson was, by most standards, an ordinary lady from Carleton County. She was a hair dresser by profession, incredibly active in her church and its programs, a leader in provincial church women’s activities, a strong proponent of senior safe living assistive devices.
Her life was devoted to serving voluntarily in situations in which she honestly believed she could help to make a positive difference. Her motivation was anything but self-interest. When asked to serve, I know her first consideration was always: can I make a difference? Is this a cause worth investing my time and energy in? Will the organization and community benefit from my involvement? How do I know that those things are true? As the original CEO of the Region 3 Hospital Corporation from 1992 through 1995, I was there with her as the first Chair of the new Board of Directors. The year was 1992 and the 56 hospitals in the province were all struggling with financial issues, human resources issues, survival issues. Left without strong and visible change, most hospitals would have been bankrupt and worse. Is this sounding familiar? The McKenna Government recognized that what had now been recommended for nearly three decades had to be initiated in order to save the system and strengthen it for the future. All hospital boards were summarily finished and replaced by regional boards. The regional boards were very carefully selected for initial terms of 3 years. Government knew that the job they would be doing in re-structuring health care would be controversial and not readily accepted in some small communities and by some local professional groups.
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Recently I did some shifts on the Salvation Army Christmas Kettles. I love that organization for what it does for people in need. It also affords a wonderful opportunity to speak with many people. Several have asked: “don’t you get discouraged writing about health and long-term care reform? You have been doing it for a long time and what do we have to show for it?”
I have to admit they are right: so many still struggling for access to primary care; many more struggling with “care for Mom or Dad”. And members of my own family have asked those questions many times, to which my response has been: “I have never been a quitter and I will keep it up as long as I see the need for overhaul.” I am impressed with the tenacity of Health Minister Dornan on issues of relevance to the development of the health system. His initiative in spending quality time in the Emergency Department as “in-Cognito patient” was unique and set him apart from many others who have had the same responsibility. As a CEO in both health and long-term care, I have often wished that senior civil servants and other policy-makers would cross the road from the offices to the actual environments that they are regulating and financing so that they, too, could get a clear picture of reality. Kudos to Dr. Dornan. I had occasion to be in the area of the DECRH emergency department Wednesday afternoon. I had seen this scene a number of times when I was a patient then when I had a family member as a patient. The last time, I referred to it as Third World conditions: great doctors and nurses doing their best to give great care to sick people in conditions that resembled battlefield conditions. On Wednesday, the emergency department was apparently overflowing to the extent that the entire corridor that separates Emergency from CT Scanning was packed with stretchers each having a bed-bound patient. None of them looked too spry!
I was reminded of the hospitals that Florence Nightingale founded during the Crimean War! That was not yesterday! Try nearly 200 years ago! It was difficult for me to avoid getting just a bit angry, not in a nasty way but anger because this is a preventable situation and many of those poor people need to be either in a hospital bed upstairs or, at least, in an emergency department cubicle with some level of privacy. Sixteen months ago, I was one of them and would not have wanted to have anyone seeing me sick like these were. Dignity, privacy, person-centred…. none of the foregoing. My critics will be quick to state that all provinces are experiencing this dreadful problem and they are correct, except it seems that other provinces are doing some things to alleviate it. And with Dr. Dornan’s leadership in primary care, there is apparent action on that large piece of the puzzle. I hear daily from people across the province and the themes of access to primary care and long-waits for long-term care are themes are consistent, never-ending. With emotion! So much so that often people simply respond with “well, that’s the way it is in NB” referring to Emergency Department congestion and chaos.
Volumes now have been written over the last two decades in this province about those issues and the Holt Government, to their credit, seems to be showing keen interest with some major steps at least on the primary care front with new collaborative care clinics. Calls for modernization of these services and action have been strongly vocalized for as long as I have lived in Fredericton. The Holt government has inherited these serious issues which have been kicked down the road for decades to the extent that they are well beyond crisis proportions. In desperation to see some signals of hope, I looked to the Throne Speech to see clues and hope for measures to be brought before the legislature in this session. It was quite encouraging in respect to Primary Care. Getting 10 collaborative care practices underway by the end of 2025 is impressive. I am fully aware of the Collaborative Care model, having been a champion of that model for over 20 years, having seen it in action elsewhere. There has been talk of that model in NB in government circles for decades and, indeed, there have been physician leaders brought to NB in the past who advocated similar models. But aside from some models that developed in the Vitalite system without provincial fanfare, there has been little more than talk. Enter Dr. Dornan, a man with a vision and the capacity to communicate it and sell it to others. This is like Dr. King did with regionalization in the 1990’s. So, I take heart, not that we will see finalization quickly but that we are seeing tangible progress on an issue so vital to the health and well-being of New Brunswickers. His leadership is making the point that Collaborative Primary Care is not only the future, it is the now! That has been the missing link in previous expressions by previous governments. Health-Care Workforce is welcome with its own heading. It is not only about recruitment. Of equal importance are the underlying issues that a succession of governments has ignored for decades. “If you don’t have a plan, any old road will get you there”. This phrase from Lewis Carroll. And in New Brunswick, frankly, it seems to fit so many of the public services that have drawn concerning headlines and occupied much debating volume for decades. Our highways? Check. Our education system? Check. Our Health and Long-Term Care System? Indeed; check and check.
The publication of the New Health Plan can give us some hope, although the bookshelves are lined with such plans in New Brunswick, each one promising to guide us to the promised land. It does present hope for those souls who have endured “no access to primary care services” and for whom the Emergency Departments and after-hours clinics have been a dreadful substitute. With the litany of plans and the combined consulting and staff costs in addition to publication and translation, do we have a measure of success? We do have some incredible clinical services in this province and once you get to them, your life can improve pretty quickly. Personal experience in my own crisis has born that out; DECRH staff and the SJRH Heart Centre and Extramural were fabulous. You would think that with all those reports and all that we have learned about issues in health and long-term care, the gaps should be narrowing. Forty percent of the acute care beds in the Horizon system are occupied by persons awaiting some level of long-term care. How often have you heard that in the last few years? Does that not anger you just a bit? And if you are aware of the impact which includes those long and dangerous wait times in Emergency and corridors filled with sick people who need expert nursing and medical help…does that not send chills down your spine? On March 13, 2024, Kelly Lamrock, the New Brunswick Child, Youth and Seniors Advocate presented his report “What We All Want” to media, the legislature, and the public. While there have been many reports in the last 20 years on long-term care, there had not been an analysis as thorough and detailed as he had in his report. His report represented what he referred to as a “deep dive” into long term care and is issues. He had heard from many people across the province and dozens of interest and advocacy groups.
He did not want it to be shallow and just one more in a stack of such reports that takes up shelf space in offices. He wanted it to be a meaningful work in order to identify issues that require resolution so that the province could develop a truly integrated and effective long-term care system. Such plans have been common in other provinces but not New Brunswick. With 200 pages and 60 recommendations it represents quite a read; not exactly a simple document for quick perusal. But it covered the waterfront and included many themes that were familiar to leaders in the long-term care sector. And there were some new issues that interested persons and advocacy groups may not have contemplated. The report did well to highlight the issues in long term care that are represented by First Nations Communities as well as Adults with learning and intellectual challenges. When asked by a reporter in March 2024 why he, when he was Minister well over a decade ago, had not dealt with these issues during his term he remarked that despite the great briefing that Ministers receive, Ministers would not normally be briefed on the level of detail that he had discovered in this study. In preparing this report he had access to representations and material well in excess of what is normally in the hands of elected officials or civil servants. In my commentary on this topic published in June 2025, I touched on the role that the Civil Service should be playing in finding solutions to those difficult issues in health and long-term care that just keep getting worse. As we seem to go from bad to worse on these issues that are of such importance to the public, politicians take all of the hits that result in interesting headlines and shots in the legislature as they try to explain issues. They usually are crises, with each party attempting to pressure the party in power into announcing something. Just announce something that sounds plausible so we can debate and criticize.
That is the typical process that so often results in disappointment for one side, frustration for the public, and a small victory for whoever won the skirmish. I have watched this performance in our legislature for 25 years as the key issues of Human Resources, access to primary care, emergency department overflow with long waits, and the backlog for long-term care with all the issues in that sector that have remained fallow for decades. I have watched as “debates” take place and all too often what I was seeing and hearing was not too impressive. Often responses to opposition questions would represent, to my ears, information that I honestly knew to be lacking. Sometimes I would leave wondering where that came from. Minister Shepherd was a breath of fresh air when she dared to start her budget speech with the line that now resonates with many: “you cannot reform health care until you fix long-term care!” Knowledgeable people in those sectors took note! That politicians deserve heat goes without saying; they are the ones who get elected with promises to fix issues that they deem the public to be most concerned with. And many of them become very skilled at responding to questions. Despite any “emergency measures” put in place, the situation with elders occupying acute care beds in hospitals awaiting long term care continues to grow. Government intervention is supposed to resolve problems! Not so much on this file!
Ask any of the great physicians in practice for reasons and you will get different responses. Ask civil servants and you will get some responses. Friends in the political world will give some other responses depending on their exposure to this disaster and at what level and under what circumstances. From Media friends, another assessment depending on who they have interviewed recently on the topic. There are lots of opinions. The advocacy associations will have yet another list of issues and they tend to be closer to the real issues because it is their lived experience every day and many have been advancing advice for decades. The Lamrock Report had some nuggets of gold. In 200 pages and 59 recommendations he covered the waterfront of long-term care, the best analysis done in NB in my lifetime. It is an exhaustive report and the nuggets need to be taken seriously and dealt with strategically; otherwise, we will have this problem, only worse, in a year, two years and more. When you need to build a system, you have to start somewhere; the system will not appear by itself. In the last 20 years I have invested weeks and weeks, yea, months and months, reading, talking with serious experts in the field (nationally and internationally), discussing issues with politicians, civil servants, service providers and advocacy groups. Some of those with whom I have interacted are legitimately “international thought leaders”. These are not people who simply have an opinion based on a neighbor’s experience. I have had great interactions with colleagues in Norway, Netherlands, Quebec, Ontario, BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, PEI and more. Andrew Waugh wrote a most interesting assessment of what he has determined to be the approach of the current government to New Brunswick’s Alternate Level of Care disaster. As he reported in the August 9 edition of the Brunswick News publications, the direction apparently set by the Premier at the time of the State of the Province Address was to take steps to make sure the situation does not get worse.
Apparently, in that discussion with media, the Premier used the term “dire” to characterize the ALC crisis in New Brunswick. On this topic, words matter. According to Google and AI: dire circumstances refer to a situation that is very serious, dangerous, or critical, often involving hardship, suffering or a potential disaster. The reality, based on hard fact, is that the situation was at that level over a decade ago and all during those years, the service provider organizations have been trying to get the attention of government, both elected and civil service, with some clear ideas and probable directions that could serve to add relief and start the process of managing eldercare in a coherent, systematic, and compassionate manner. Over-crowded emergency departments are no new thing. They had symptoms of overcrowding back in the 1990’s and since that time it has gotten progressively worse. The senior population, and I am certainly one of them, seem to have become “numbed” and tend to accept that hours of waiting in emergency departments, stretchers in the hallway for both young and old, staff run off their feet……. that’s the way it is. Any other demographic would be up in arms very publicly demanding direction. But not so much for my generation. So much for “grey power”! The evidence suggests that the situation was left in the “dire” level for so long it is now at the ‘disaster’ level. Two weeks ago, they hit the 666 for ALCs. Andrew Waugh’s article on July 31, 2025 should be sobering for anyone who has had those dreadfully long waits in the Emergency Departments of hospitals. What does that have to do with old folks and alternate level of care, you ask? Everything.
Running an efficient emergency department requires superb staff with lots of skill and training, good modern equipment, access to great diagnostic and therapeutic supports, and space that is properly laid out and equipped to function efficiently. Our emergency departments have all that. But they remain in a state of chaos during many hours of the day and week. Chaos can be managed by these talented people when they are administering life-sustaining care to those whose conditions are medically life-threatening. But when the department is overflowing with those whose conditions are concerning but not emergency, that is a different story. Based on their training, staff know and are committed to giving care priority to people with acute chest pain, acute abdominal distress, stroke symptoms, premature labor, fractures and multiple trauma. Having that compromised with frail elders who have problems but not at that level introduces a serious challenge to otherwise great care and public service. Minister Cindy Miles approved the implementation of the priority for admission to long-term care for hospitalized patients as recommended by a desperate CEO, Margaret Melanson, last week. In her approval, she mentioned that government would like to ensure that level of crisis does not recur.
Newsflash! It will and it has! This is the second time in two years that this measure has been invoked. As Andrew Waugh reported, in late 2023 it was invoked by the Tory government and now, less than two years later, by the Liberal government. I was consulting with the long-term care sector at that time in 2023. As the Premier has correctly referenced, the Alternate Level of Care (ALC) issue is not new. Its origins extend back half a century! In 1959 the seeds were originally planted as the Hospital Services and Diagnostic Services Act provisions were rolled out across the country. That was the beginning of Canada’s “free hospital care system”, as it has been known on the street. In some quarters, people seem to think this crisis “just happened”! It has been growing under the noses of policy-makers and regulators. It all started innocently and I recall, in the 1990’s, the debates in the DECRH about the need to levy a charge for hospital days involved when ALC patients occupied acute care beds. The actual policy and governmental regulation were that admission to an acute care bed was restricted to those patients in which it was “medically necessary” for them to be there. Actually, all acute care hospital services were subject to that specification: medically necessary. More precisely, everything done by way of admission, diagnostic tests and therapies, special nutrition, special medications, surgical procedures were governed by that those two words: medical necessity. The onus was on the physician, since they have been and still are, the guardians of the admission/discharge decision, to be able to justify everything based on their professional judgement of “medical necessity”. That was the number of expensive, acute care hospital beds occupied by older folks who are waiting to be transferred to long-term care in Horizon hospitals as of July 12, 2025! Not exactly the apocalypse but sobering. Apart from religious literature explanations of that number, the real negative message for New Brunswick families is that a huge number of beds that should be used to process patients who have serious, acute and often life-threatening problems are not available. Those beds are occupied by persons who need nursing home (round the clock nursing supervision), special care (round the clock support), or enhanced home support. None of these options come close to the cost of acute care hospitals!
Add to Horizon’s shocking total is the 318 number from Vitalite which brings the provincial total to 984! That would be the equivalent of three DECRH’s filled entirely with elders awaiting the level of long-term care that their condition warrants! Let that sink in for a minute as a taxpayer or as someone whose loved one is languishing on a stretcher in one of the corridors in the Emergency departments. If that is considered acceptable, then on what basis would it be seen to be acceptable? What value system would lead to that view? Furthermore, as has been described for policy makers for decades: acute care beds are the worst care option for persons whose needs are at the level described as level 2 or 3. At those levels, people need help with most activities of daily living, comfortable accommodation, nutritious food, security, help with medications, and access to physician or extramural care periodically. Case in point: recently a patient was transferred from a care facility because he “needed a higher level of care.” Over to the hospital where the only option was a TV room being used to house multiple sick people with no bathroom! How is that a standard of care that could be seen even remotely as acceptable? New Brunswick is a wonderful province in which to live and retire! Its assets and attractions are many ranging from beaches, beautiful and breathtaking coastline, great hunting, fishing and other outdoor sports, cities with wonderful walking trails, churches, academic institutions and ever so much more. It was identified in 1992 as a province in which the health care system could become a model for the country.
Despite its qualities and attractions, highways and streets and related infrastructure seem always in need of major overhaul. And the health and long-term care system, despite the years of talk of reforms, still seems stuck with many issues that impact quality health and long-term care. Indeed, the TJ article on June 6.25, written by Andrew Waugh, reported that national comparisons show NB as the worst performer in Canada in terms of Emergency Department wait-times. It is clear that emergency department wait times, organization of and access to primary care, and long-term care are all very much interconnected services. For anyone desiring to make a difference in our health care system, that is the first thing they need to understand. These inter-connected relationships have been documented in the literature for half a century! At election time, attention always goes to those seeking office with strong pressure from the public to promise to fix these things that have been so bothersome to the public for decades. Once elected, it often seems to take light years to get even the most obvious small change made be it dangerous road conditions or more than obvious “fixes” for the most basic of health and long-term care issues. This is the undertaking of the current government as described in the article by Barbara Simpson and published in the TJ on April 23, 2025. The phrase takes its roots from the Budget Speech of the Minister of Finance as he delivered this government’s first budget in the Legislature in March of this year.
In that speech, and in subsequent discussion in the legislature, the Minister was pressed on government’s platform commitment to balance the budget while projecting a serious deficit in their first year in power. As to the huge health file, which constitutes nearly half of government expenditures, he stated that government will “do business differently”. His speech had a whole section on the topic of Transformational Change. To advocates for the health and long-term care file, the use of that language was music to our ears. For many years, we have been trying to push government to acknowledge the need for transformation, not just the simple promises of change that have been part of the governmental and bureaucratic language for too long. As McKenna found in the 1990’s, deep change requires Transformation, changing the way business is done. Changing the way business is done involves, at a minimum, laying all the cards on the table, not just those cards that are safe and convenient. Transformation is not for the faint of heart; those who do not have either the willingness or the courage to engage, with the serious risks that are involved, should exit stage left right away. “Looking under the hood” is a phrase used often by those who create and direct serious transformation. In health care, the early 1990’s was the last time we saw serious transformation in New Brunswick. Actually, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan were the leaders and every other province has followed our example. But not until these two provinces paved the way and absorbed some hits in order to get the tough issues of transformation kick-started! Long-term care is in a larger crisis than most would acknowledge. When you are trying to help elders in getting the level of care they need, then you see it up close and personal; or if you are assisting a patient of any age in getting emergency care, you see the reality up close. Many of the serious pressure points in the health system can be traced back to the log-jam created by the thousands of seniors who get into health crisis then end up in acute care beds or, worse still, on stretchers in corridors for days, weeks and months in hospitals.
As these columns have outlined many times in the last 5 years, dealing with the issues that need to be fixed in order to create the system that our society needs and deserves is not a simple task. If the understanding of policy decision-makers is not complete, as it often is not, much energy and investment can be directed unintentionally to the wrong places with little or no impact. An acute and detailed understanding of the system is absolutely required at the tables in which planning and strategy takes place. Public servants, great and dedicated as they are, will not come to the table fully equipped unless they have had training and experience in administering services and programs inside the system. Managing a government division or a section or, even, an entire department, does not afford the level of practical knowledge that is essential to getting systems fixed. Hats off to the Holt government for initiating more collaborative clinics and getting the approach to licensure of foreign-trained physicians producing tangible results. They are apparently acting with some swiftness to commence reforms that have been needed for decades. Health Minister Dr. Dornan seems to be off to a good start.
Finance Minister Rene Legace sent the first signal from government that I have heard since 1992: he used the language of reform in referring to the health portion of the budget. Previous governments have avoided using the language of reform. The discouragement that tens of thousands of New Brunswickers have experienced for the last two decades has been deep seated and justified. The feelings of discouragement have been equally palpable when persons in need of emergency care describe their challenges with the full waiting rooms and corridors filled with sick people. One of the root issues there has been the hundreds of beds occupied by persons awaiting proper long term care placement. These have all had volumes written about them in these newspapers. Over 40 years ago, in the late 1970’s and the 1980’s, health economists and public health leaders made a simple and profound observation: if you think things are tough in health care now, just wait until the Baby Boomer generation hits the system. The system has had 4 decades to prepare for the level of distress that was forecast at that time. The health and long-term care systems in New Brunswick have been left so long without firm vision and direction that Minister Dornan, Minister Miles and Premier Holt have a monumental strategic challenge in order to get the pieces moving in tandem to provide the essential results of reform.
By now, the public is well aware of the need for Primary Care Reform and Reform of Emergency Departments. The term “unattached patients” or “orphan patients” is an unnecessarily degrading term to describe taxpayers who have simply not been able to get through the long list of thousands of people waiting for a regular slot on the list of one of New Brunswick’s terrific physicians. And it gets worse when they, or anyone else, has occasion to visit the Emergency Department in one of New Brunswick’s larger hospitals, only to be met with uncomfortable waits of up to 24 hours “to be seen”. The most recent example that was brought to my attention was a person who actually suffering from a serious cancer requiring prompt diagnosis and treatment. Under the circumstances described, sitting in an Emergency Department waiting room for seven hours was tragic at best. I am not in a position of any executive authority nor with any particular influence, but I have heard those stories for far too long. In my own case, just in the last year, I experienced serious cardiac symptoms for weeks before eventually giving in to call the ambulance. I was fearful of the long waits because mine were not the classic acute chest pain symptoms. I was confident the EMTs would get me to the care required and they did! It was 6 years ago that a newly elected premier and his colleagues called for reforms in the health sector, amongst many other things they had on their agenda. For two decades prior to that, a number of serious health and long-term care issues had been accumulating:
In the power and decision-making structure of the New Brunswick government, the legislature has been for generations the centre of serious activity. That is where legislation is approved, legislative changes are solemnized, legislative committees and officers are legally bound to demonstrate accountability to “we the people”.
The Opposition parties play, in our democracy, a serious role in presenting questions that technically are supposed to provide opportunity for government to hear the voice of the people, consider other perspectives, enable the government to explain their proposals for public consumption. The public can connect by webcast to the sittings and we can, as well, actually go to the legislature to hear the questions and government’s defense of its position on whatever is the issue of the day or session. The opposition raised a pertinent question on Thursday, June 6, 2024 that has received little coverage and follow up with media and government choosing to focus, instead, on the Auditor General’s report on Travel Nurses. June 26 was a day to be remembered for one of New Brunswick’s foremost and successful business leaders, Jim Irving, was honored at a funeral at Saunders-Irving Chapel in Sussex. His 4 children gave articulate and moving commentary on the impact of this great man not only on the business community but on the family, the province and beyond. Robert, Mary Jean, Judith, and Jim all described the qualities of Mr. Irving that contributed to the huge impact that he has had in business, the province, local society and so much more.
Robert Irving, who directs significant businesses as part of the family business empire, described much of the business style that Mr. Irving demonstrated, emphasizing that central to his successful leadership was his commitment to Management by Walking Around! He described the level of his commitment to speaking with employees and consumers. He observed that it has been a commitment to that process that has kept new ideas and directions flowing for years. Those who have known the Irving Family, personally or as employees or customers, know that to be true. I have heard stories told by employees in various positions who experienced Mr. Irving’s walk-abouts as he often would arrive, unannounced, pulling up a chair and asking for opinions and insights. On May 7, 2024 the Minister of Health released a plan entitled New Brunswick Primary Health Care Action Plan. He said that it re-iterates the government’s commitment to improving access to health care services.
Since its release, it has been faced with criticism from the Medical Society in which its President, Dr. Paula Keating, said that she had not seen the plan prior to its release. Other groups that should have perspective have not exactly been too vocal thus far. The plan consists of 26 pages of description of issues in the current primary care system with ideas for implementation to create a primary care system in a province in which, as the plan states, has primary care provided by a group of “moving parts” that are not organized in any “cohesive system.” That lack of organization has been more than a little apparent in the past two decades as family physicians have retired requiring sometimes three physicians to take over their practice. Worse still is the something over 60,000 New Brunswick residents that have no access to essential primary care services. He was a young man in his prime, gainfully employed in business, then was overtaken by what turned out to be a congenital heart issue requiring open heart surgery. With the success of the surgery combined with the clinical history, careful monitoring on some regular basis would be normal. Yet he is one of those persons, not defined as a senior, who has no access to primary care. Family physician closed practice with records somewhere, cardiologist retired. What is a person to do for follow up?
Another man with history of heart disease following a very active life involving service in health care and public service; family doctor retired so access to primary care is a 90-minute drive to see a terrific nurse practitioner. Another lady with serious dementia, managed for a considerable time at home by the husband until recent admission to nursing home, whose family physician left the province with no transition arrangements for continued primary care. The media has covered Travel Nurses and Health Authority Collaboration well and the Auditor General is asking questions. What did you know and when did you know it? Then in classic New Brunswick fashion, the fingers come out in pursuit of where blame can be ascribed; anywhere but government! There is a lot of blame to go around and government should refrain from over-reacting.
Travel Nurses? The need was created because the issues in the nursing profession have been allowed to fester untreated for twenty years. The pandemic was the tipping point with the enormous pressure placed on direct care workers by a Public Health crisis of unprecedented proportions. This, combined with the distress caused by the politics of Covid, was unlike any public health crisis in this lifetime. Public health officials and government at all levels were inventing solutions that were created in an environment in which there was pitifully little factual, tried and true information. The public was scared to death with the publicity and the response taken by various levels of government, based on information that they accepted, in good faith, from the World Health Organization and the federal authorities. The media kept the sense of panic going with the incessant news coverage; they, also, were learning for the first time. Lamrock Again: how bad does it have to get before there is real strategic direction provincially?4/2/2024 Don’t be put off by reading more about the Lamrock report! If you feel that enough is enough, that is ok, but the key problems in health and long-term care do not get resolved in New Brunswick without some visionaries being very persistent. The public has to say “enough is enough”! No more tinkering with technology or solutions that give great photo ops and sound bytes. Particularly in an election year, beware of solutions intended to placate or offset public expression of concern.
Media exposes some of the issues that impact long-term care with those issues often disguised in other forms. Nothing in health and long-term care is simple nor do simplistic solutions tend to yield sustained, satisfactory results. The Lamrock report represents the opportunity for public policy in this very significant area to be put on the table and brought into line with current needs, issues, trends, and demographics. Lamrock makes the point more eloquently than has been done in the recent past: long-term care is a hodgepodge of services organized in a manner that does not encourage integration, consistent quality, consistent financing, nor many of the other relevant public policy goals. The Nursing Homes Act was originally proclaimed in 1982 with a financing mechanism that has not been systematically brought up to date since that time. The Family Services Act, under which the majority of long-term care services are regulated, was proclaimed in 1980 for a purpose other than long-term adult care. “Is this the one or shall we wait for another…. if I live that long…?” So asked a prominent, articulate senior of 90 years of age who has seen the dark underbelly of New Brunswick’s senior and long-term care system. She is one of thousands who have been waiting to see the system modernized and brought into sync with the current age.
The TJ editorial, “The Gospel According to Kelly” seemed to pan the Lamrock Report as did the quotes attributed to the Premier. Both, on the surface, seem insulting to any New Brunswicker who has had experience of managing in the system or attempting to effect change and improvements. Not in the last three decades has there been an effort by government to create any plan for this sector despite many volumes of reports on seniors’ care done. |
AuthorKen McGeorge, BS,DHA,CHE is a career health care executive based in Fredericton, NB, Canada. Archives
October 2025
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