A New Hampshire hospital is marketing a number of healthcare services to Townshippers living on the Quebec side of the Canada-US border. The decision comes at a time when the public healthcare system in Quebec faces pressure due to increased demand for health and social services and challenges with staff retention.
Over the last few weeks, Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital has been sending out flyers to residents of the Eastern Townships to make them aware of what services it offers. The hospital also sent out a survey to get a better understanding of the healthcare needs in the region and to adapt its environment to better welcome those that seek its services, including having translators available for French-speaking Canadians.
Scott Colby, CEO of the New Hampshire hospital, said that while the Eastern Townships has “quality healthcare” under the CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS - the regional health authority - it’s important for the hospital to raise awareness around the different healthcare options that its making available to Townshippers.
However, Robin-Marie Coleman - president and adjoint chief executive officer of the CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS - said that these types of campaigns give rise to a potential divide in Quebec’s healthcare system when accessing health and social services. According to Coleman, Townshippers’ shouldn’t have to refer to the private sector for quality services, and the situation further highlights the need to re-organize healthcare in Quebec to avoid creating a two-tiered system.
“Sometimes it’s not easy for the population to realize all of the different advancements that have been done in order to try and increase preventative and first-line care. However, I believe that it’s our jobs that we make sure to provide care and services in the best way possible in order to not contribute to that divide,” she emphasized. “Ultimately, our role is to increase the health and social services of the population. Access to quality healthcare should not depend on your capacity to pay for those services.”
Coleman noted that having a public healthcare system that “doesn’t create a divide between those that can afford and can’t afford healthcare and social services” is something that Quebecers should be “proud of,” but she recognizes that more work needs to be done in order to provide accessible quality healthcare to all Quebecers.
“Quebecers and Townshippers are aware that it’s been a little bit more difficult over the past few years. The pandemic was rough, there was a lot of backlog in several services and care created. The healthcare system has had to re-organize itself over the last few years to respond to Covid needs and emergent care and surgery,” explained Coleman. “Perhaps during that time the public got the perception that preventive or first-line care was less important in Quebec, but that’s not the case. The healthcare system is getting itself back on track, waiting lists are reducing, and there’s really been massive transformation and investments by the government of Quebec to increase accessibility.”
Scott Colby said he was not aware of the situation that Quebec is facing when he was looking to launch the Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital's marketing campaign in the Eastern Townships. He emphasized that the hospital's marketing campaign was intended to raise awareness, and not to encourage Townshippers’ to take the private route for their healthcare needs.
“Our intent is very simple: to provide an option to people. (…) We believe that the people have to make their own choice” he explained. “[The Eastern Townships] has excellent quality healthcare. This option in New Hampshire isn’t going to be for everybody, but there may be some people who want to take advantage of it and those are the people that we are trying to target.”
Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital is making over 200 services available to Townshippers,’ including lab tests, preventative health screenings, and diagnostic imaging, and these services are charged at the same rate as an American citizen without insurance. The hospital is creating a bilingual website for those seeking information on the different services offered and their costs.
“We’re not trying to replace the Canadian health system. We are trying to build an awareness of options. What is referred to as ‘medical tourism’ is quite common around the globe actually where patients are given the option of having services done at various locations. We wanted to build some awareness around the services that this hospital offers and let people know that we are making it available to residents of the Eastern Townships,” he highlighted.
Robin-Marie Coleman of CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS said that she recognizes that Townshippers’ have faced lengthy wait times when trying to access first-line and preventative care over the last couple years, reflecting how important it is to continue transforming and investing in the public system to provide more “readily available” care. She mentioned that the regional health authority is working on a number of projects to transform how it goes about providing quality care to the population - including a new hotline for people without a family doctor - to avoid having people pay out of pocket for the services they need.
“One of the elements that I already mentioned is that it’s crucial to not contribute to creating the divide and to offer specific services that are different according to the needs of the population. We’re working closely now with every single one of our local healthcare networks to see if there are specific needs in the community that need to be addressed in particular way,” she highlighted. “We know that we have a population that is getting older. We know that in that case it’s going to be important to offer services as close as possible to these people. We’re starting to think about innovative ways to do that with the challenges that we know that we have with human resources and how we can do things differently and make things easier for people.”
Despite the challenges facing the CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS, Robin-Marie Coleman assured Townshippers that there is no need to go to the United States for private healthcare and that they will be treated as their local health authority deems fit.
“Some of those difficult decisions that we’ve had to take in reducing accessibility to certain services, for example, during the summer period to give vacation to employees was done considering the fact that we want to have sufficient quality, competent, resources in order to provide quality care to Townshippers,” she explained. “So far things have been going well because we made those decisions at the right time. However, like I mentioned, we’re going to need to transform - massively - how we offer care and services and we’re going to need the collaboration of the population too to receive services in a different way.”
Listen to the full interview below with Scott Colby, CEO of the Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital along with Clarke L. Reiner, Executive Assistant to the President & CEO; and Robin-Marie Coleman of CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS: