{"id":171886,"date":"2023-08-10T10:51:31","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T14:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=171886"},"modified":"2023-08-10T10:51:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T14:51:31","slug":"new-hampshire-hospital-marketing-campaign-highlights-need-to-transform-quebecs-public-healthcare-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/new-hampshire-hospital-marketing-campaign-highlights-need-to-transform-quebecs-public-healthcare-system\/","title":{"rendered":"New Hampshire hospital marketing campaign highlights need to transform Quebec’s public healthcare system"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New Hampshire hospital\u00a0<\/span>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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the last few weeks, Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Scott Colby, CEO of the New Hampshire hospital, said that while the Eastern Townships has \u201cquality healthcare\u201d under the CIUSSS de l\u2019Estrie CHUS - the regional health authority - it\u2019s important for the hospital to raise awareness around the different healthcare options that its making available to Townshippers.<\/p>\n

However, Robin-Marie Coleman - president and adjoint chief executive officer of the CIUSSS de l\u2019Estrie CHUS - said that these types of campaigns give rise to a potential divide in Quebec\u2019s healthcare system when accessing health and social services. According to Coleman, Townshippers\u2019 shouldn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it\u2019s 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\u2019s our jobs that we make sure to provide care and services in the best way possible in order to not contribute to that divide,\u201d she emphasized. \u201cUltimately, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman noted that having a public healthcare system that \u201cdoesn\u2019t create a divide between those that can afford and can\u2019t afford healthcare and social services\u201d is something that Quebecers should be \u201cproud of,\u201d but she recognizes that more work needs to be done in order to provide accessible quality healthcare to all Quebecers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cQuebecers and Townshippers are aware that it\u2019s 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,\u201d explained Coleman. \u201cPerhaps during that time the public got the perception that preventive or first-line care was less important in Quebec, but that\u2019s not the case. The healthcare system is getting itself back on track, waiting lists are reducing, and there\u2019s really been massive transformation and investments by the government of Quebec to increase accessibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019 to take the private route for their healthcare needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur intent is very simple: to provide an option to people. (\u2026) We believe that the people have to make their own choice\u201d he explained. \u201c[The Eastern Townships] has excellent quality healthcare. This option in New Hampshire isn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upper Valley Connecticut Hospital is making over 200 services available to Townshippers,\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to replace the Canadian health system. We are trying to build an awareness of options. What is referred to as \u2018medical tourism\u2019 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,\u201d he highlighted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Robin-Marie Coleman of CIUSSS de l\u2019Estrie CHUS said that she recognizes that Townshippers\u2019 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 \u201creadily available\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the elements that I already mentioned is that it\u2019s crucial to not contribute to creating the divide and to offer specific services that are different according to the needs of the population. We\u2019re 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,\u201d she highlighted. \u201cWe know that we have a population that is getting older. We know that in that case it\u2019s going to be important to offer services as close as possible to these people. We\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges facing the CIUSSS de l\u2019Estrie 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of those difficult decisions that we\u2019ve 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,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo far things have been going well because we made those decisions at the right time. However, like I mentioned, we\u2019re going to need to transform - massively - how we offer care and services and we\u2019re going to need the collaboration of the population too to receive services in a different way.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019Estrie CHUS:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A New Hampshire hospital\u00a0is 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.\u00a0 Over the last few weeks,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":171977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[223],"tags":[29118,29103,7041,29101,29102,29111],"radio":[246],"origine":[274,259,260],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171886"}],"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\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171886"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171983,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171886\/revisions\/171983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171886"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=171886"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=171886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}