Getting the job done in health care

Opinion

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This article was published 10/04/2024 (546 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s NDP government seems to have a love-hate relationship with private medical clinics.

In opposition, the NDP regularly criticized the then-Tory government for expanding the use of private clinics within the publicly funded health-care system. NDP leader Wab Kinew accused the Tories of “privatizing” health care.

If elected to government, the NDP would scale back on the use of private clinics and expand the public system, Kinew pledged at the time.

Now that the NDP is in government, it has already extended some contracts with private clinics, including the Maples Surgical Centre, which performs orthopedic surgeries.

Under those contracts, patients are not charged a fee for the medical services they receive. The procedures, whether surgical or diagnostic, are covered under the province’s publicly funded health-care system.

Contracting with private clinics is perfectly legal under the Canada Health Act. The federal legislation prohibits doctors and clinics from charging patients fees for medical services that are covered under a provincial government’s health-care plan. It does not prevent provinces from contracting with private clinics if the services are covered by government.

So why is this even a debate? Because the NDP appears to be ideologically opposed to using private clinics. The party has been steadfast in its criticism of private facilities and campaigned during last year’s provincial election to limit their use.

When asked last week which private contracts the province is continuing, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara wouldn’t say. The minister instead promised that information about private clinics would be coming soon.

Provincial governments of all political stripes in Canada, including in Manitoba, have for decades been using private clinics to expand capacity under their publicly funded heath-care systems. It’s not new. Private clinics provide governments with flexibility outside of publicly operated hospitals and add capacity to the system.

In Manitoba, for example, Western Surgery Centre, a private clinic in Winnipeg, performs thousands of cataract surgeries a year for the province. The clinic has increased the number of procedures it performs for the province since the COVID-19 pandemic and has helped reduce the backlog for cataract surgery.

The bulk of cataract surgeries are still performed at the publicly operated Misericordia Health Centre, including some of the more complicated procedures. But the province uses a mix of public and private providers to gain as much capacity as it can.

The new NDP government should not change that. It should not allow its ideological aversion to private clinics to influence decisions on how best to reduce wait times for medical procedures. The only thing that should matter is expanding capacity and finding the best price and quality possible. Whether a procedure is performed at a public hospital or a private clinic should be immaterial.

Wait times for hip and knee replacement, and for many diagnostic services such as MRIs and CT scans, are longer today than they were prior to the pandemic. A growing and aging population is expected to put more pressure on the system in the coming years. Government should therefore do everything in its power to expand capacity.

If that means contracting with more private clinics, or increasing volumes at existing ones, so be it. As long as government is getting good value for its money and patients are not paying directly for the service, it should not matter whether a procedure is performed at a private clinic or a public hospital.

Ideology should play no role in that decision-making process.