Editorial: Summit is a sign of relief to come

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Details surrounding a special health-care summit later this spring, focusing in part on group-based primary care, is an encouraging sign the province is going in the right direction on the most important part of our health system.

It’s long been clear that the status quo is not working. Tens of thousands of New Brunswickers are without a primary care provider – with experts warning the number of “orphans” is due only to increase.

Over and over, it is reported that the best practice is collaborative community health clinics – empowered by modern electronic medical records – instead of traditional, single-doctor operations that often rely on inflexible paper records.

Often under-emphasized, a key advantage of collaborative clinics is the ability to assign medical professionals based on relevant expertise. Clinicians with a lower rank can, in many cases, provide adequate care – especially under the general supervision of full doctors. Yet under the old model, all roads led to an MD.

It finally seems as if our turgid health system is breaking the mold by insisting that physicians work together, amongst their colleagues and other health providers, in a group practice. Doubtless there are some die-hards who won’t embrace this idea – but it is absolutely the direction we need to move if we are to deliver equitable health-care to all New Brunswickers.

What we’ve seen from the current system is a model based excessively on luck: If you happen to have a doctor, that means you get access to one. But if your doctor happens to retire, then you best get in line with everyone else and hope for the best – between walk-in clinics and the emergency room.

A broken model won’t be fixed with one policy. But this initiative represents our best chance to meaningfully improve health-care access. Those who’ve pushed for this outcome deserve our praise.