20 May Horizon 2025: The Revitalization of Quebec’s Health Care System
Impact of the pandemic
Recently, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, presented his plan to overhaul Quebec’s health care system. This ambitious promise of reform will have tangible results by 2025. The damage caused by the various waves of Covid and staff shortages are increasingly threatening patient care.
Since the winter of 2020, the health crisis has highlighted the vulnerability of our healthcare system. The toll is heavy: overburdened hospitals, anxious patients and families, and a glaring lack of staff. Many employees are exhausted after working through the first four waves of the pandemic. Hospitals are temporarily closing their emergency rooms due to staff shortages.
The result: Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are currently waiting for surgery or medical procedures, and some of them may have already lost their lives while waiting. The numbers speak for themselves.
There is another scary statistic. Indeed, a report from the SecondStreet.org study and research center reveals that more than 353,000 surgeries and medical consultations have been postponed in the 10 Canadian provinces since the beginning of the pandemic.
The different actors of the healthcare sector have realized that we should all work to improve a system that has shown its limits.
This is the context in which the Legault government’s “Plan Santé” is being implemented. It aims to rethink the way hospitals provide care by putting the patient at the heart of the system and preserving the mental health of a nursing staff that is in dire straits.
Optimism is the order of the day. Real change is possible and 2025 will be the year to take stock."
What are the key points of this plan?
As a reminder, here are the Legault government’s main priorities:
- Reduce overcrowding in emergency rooms
- Facilitate access to care for patients who do not have a family doctor
- Massive recruitment and training of personnel
- Initiate a “massive shift to home care”.
- Further improve care for seniors.
- Facilitate access to patient records.
We are moving towards decentralization to make our system more flexible and better able to anticipate future health crises.
“Yesterday’s network had become outdated, bureaucratic and cumbersome” writes Minister Christian Dubé in his plan.
The accelerated adoption of technology in the health care environment, primarily to limit physical contact between people, is encouraging. But it is not enough. The road ahead is still long and winding.
What about the patient?
An evolving system aims to empower patients and families by giving them access to the right tools. As Cédric Piasco, co-founder of Azurdev, said during his participation in the BDO #Pitchday event (March 2022), we need to “educate patients, engage them so that they are no longer just spectators but actors in their care journey”.
Indeed, although staff are properly trained, they may not be sufficiently available to respond to patients’ needs and questions.
Many patients have difficulty obtaining basic health information. Some have no health knowledge, or no real understanding of their changing health status. And even when they do receive information, they may be overwhelmed or lack confidence in their choices.
Moreover, when the hospital stay ends, patients and caregivers become fully responsible for everything that involves living with an illness or long recovery. How to manage medication, change eating habits, increase physical activity, etc.?
Educating for better care
At Azurdev, we strive to provide the tools patients need to better understand and manage their health. Our experience in the field, as well as the partnerships we have formed with numerous hospitals in Quebec and Ontario, have led us to develop a module dedicated entirely to patient education. This module is offered through our patient engagement platform, Evan. It has been designed and developed to :
- Educate patients about their health.
- Promote positive patient behavior.
- Facilitate preventive care and reduce costs.
With Evan, caregivers can share educational videos, tutorials, educational games and useful links to learn more in a simple and fun way. All of this is directly viewable via LG TVs and/or tablets in the hospital.
Patient engagement is designed to encourage healthy patient habits, facilitate preventive care and encourage regular exercise.
