“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.