{"id":106757,"date":"2022-07-20T15:49:34","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T19:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=106757"},"modified":"2022-07-20T17:49:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T21:49:11","slug":"higgs-health-shake-up-is-hugely-disappointing-says-rural-health-group-co-chair-john-higham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/higgs-health-shake-up-is-hugely-disappointing-says-rural-health-group-co-chair-john-higham\/","title":{"rendered":"Higgs’ health shake up is ‘hugely disappointing,’ says rural health group co-chair John Higham"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Higham is not very hopeful about the shake-up in New Brunswick health care announced last week by Premier Blaine Higgs. In fact, the former Sackville mayor and co-chair of the Rural Health Action Group says he is \u201chugely disappointed\u201d in Higgs\u2019 announcement on Friday that he is firing Horizon CEO John Dornan, dissolving Horizon and Vitalit\u00e9 boards, and shuffling his cabinet ministers around to put Bruce Fitch in charge of health and Dorothy Shephard in charge of social development.<\/p>\n

Higham has been involved in defending health care services in Sackville since the \u201cfirst significant threat\u201d to the hospital took place while he was mayor, in February 2020. Since then, the overarching issue he\u2019s observed is that \u201chealth services have just been divorced from community needs and desire to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higham felt the work he and the other volunteers of the Rural Health Action Group have done in the past while was working towards changing that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw some great progress in the last few years,\u201d Higham says, \u201cparticularly with our collaboration with Horizon and with Dr. Dornan\u2019s understanding of what he saw in rural [health], and what was required. And now I just don\u2019t see any of that. I\u2019m really frustrated with this announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here the full interview with John Higham here:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Just two days before Higgs fired Dornan and dissolved the Horizon health board, the Rural Health Action Group released an update on its progress, noting a number of new and imminent nursing hires to work in the Sackville hospital. Higham credits that progress with the \u201ccollaboration and understanding\u201d the group has had recently with the Horizon team led by Dornan. No doubt the hiring of former Sackville nurse Nancy Parker to help recruit and retain nurses<\/a> is related to the recent success.<\/p>\n

\u2018If you\u2019re going to lose Dr. Dornan, you may lose that initiative\u2019<\/h2>\n

Dornan had developed a reputation for taking criticism and accepting responsibility. In December 2021, a few days after the latest announcement on service cuts at the Sackville Hospital, Dornan and his senior staff attended a Sackville town council meeting<\/a> via video conference and got an earful from local councillors and health care advocates. At the time Dornan told councillors he understood they were, \u201cangry, upset, distrustful. We\u2019ve earned some of that. And I\u2019m asking to be given a chance to recreate that trust and earn that back.\u201d It was the beginning of what Higham describes as a period of \u201ccollaboration and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back, Higham says, \u201cwhat I saw was that Dr. Dornan was seeding an expansion of the role of communities in health services.\u201d In the ensuing weeks and months, Horizon hired Parker, and collaborated on a health care recruitment website.<\/p>\n

On July 13, the day before the Rural Health Action Group released their optimistic update, Dornan told CBC Information Morning host Khalil Akhtar that one of the Sackville hospital\u2019s operating rooms could be put to use doing less complex orthopedic surgeries to help alleviate a regional backlog. In the same interview, Dornan applauded surgeons for speaking out publicly about their situation and making the decision not to further add to waitlists.<\/p>\n

Higham describes Dornan as open to questioning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe challenged him multiple times early on, and he always responded with \u2018that\u2019s a good question, that\u2019s a good answer, I will get back to you\u2019. He challenged his staff to work with community groups,\u201d says Higham, adding that he\u2019s heard similar positive feedback on Dornan from other communities. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to lose Dr. Dornan, you may lose that,\u201d says Higham, \u201cthat initiative and that attempt to move that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping that some of the voices will stand up to say, let\u2019s not lose this,\u201d says Higham.<\/p>\n

Trustees appointed to replace boards have not yet visited with Rural Health Action Group<\/h2>\n

In addition to firing Dornan, Higgs also dissolved the current boards of both Vitalit\u00e9 and Horizon health networks, which were made up of partially appointed and partially elected representatives. Higgs fired them all, and has instead put in place a single trustee in each network: Suzanne Johnston for Horizon Health and G\u00e9rald Richard for Vitalit\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Appointed trustee in charge of the Horizon health network, Suzanne Johnson, speaking to reporters in June as a co-chair of the health plan implementation task force. Image: Youtube screencap.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Those names might sound familiar to anyone following the health care reform saga in New Brunswick. Both were already appointed by Higgs in November 2021 to head up a task force on implementing the province\u2019s reform plan. In June, they held a news conference to update on their progress, mentioning much-lauded projects such as Port Elgin\u2019s Nursing Home Without Walls program. Richard told reporters that part of the mandate of the task force was meeting people in their communities. But as of last Saturday, neither Johnson nor Richard has met with the members of the Rural Health Action Group. And now that they have executive control over the health networks, it\u2019s not clear if Johnson and Richard will maintain their task force mandate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve now got no board, no elected officials, appointees\u2026 A group of people that are now taking over with no understanding of what we\u2019ve been doing with communities or what the results have been,\u201d says Higham. \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy, the event that led to all this, but the larger picture to me is that it\u2019s going the wrong way. We\u2019ve got centralized and unaccountable health services now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Higham is not very hopeful about the shake-up in New Brunswick health care announced last week by Premier Blaine Higgs. In fact, the former Sackville mayor and co-chair of the Rural Health Action Group says he is \u201chugely disappointed\u201d in Higgs\u2019 announcement on Friday that he is firing Horizon CEO John Dornan, dissolving Horizon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":73961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,223,225],"tags":[3445,11934,11426,16971,11428,3619,16970],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106797,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106757\/revisions\/106797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106757"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=106757"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=106757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}