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.

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.