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PC PARTY BLUEPRINT - 9/10
Strong Health Care
Healthy lifestyle choices promote a greatly enhanced quality of life. In our first term, we developed our Provincial Wellness Plan to promote healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco control, injury prevention, mental health promotion, child and youth development, environmental health and health protection. Our Recreation and Sport Strategy promotes increased involvement and participation in recreation and sport, improved access for all, strengthened public sector support, reaching our potential through enhanced excellence, building human resource capacity, and building capacity through infrastructure. Together, these initiatives will give people the opportunities and the tools to make healthier choices and to live vibrant, active lives.
Still, all of us, at various points in our lives, find ourselves in need of health care services and the expertise of the many professionals who deliver these services. We as a province already devote nearly half of our annual spending to health care, so we must continually work to ensure we spend our limited resources as effectively as possible to ensure we are prepared to meet the needs. We have already reorganized health care administration to focus more spending on providing the best front-line health services we can. However, many nurses, doctors and other health care professionals are stretched to the limit, so much more must be done. We have invested heavily in new diagnostic and treatment equipment and services to enable our health system to treat patients' needs in a more timely and effective manner. We have worked to build teams of professionals to enable people in rural regions to get the care they need closer to home. We have pressured the federal government to start listening to public calls for national pharmacare, home care and child care funding programs within the context of national medicare. The bottom line is ensuring people have access to the high-quality care they need when they need it. We are listening to health care providers, patients and families and will use their feedback to make our system stronger, more responsive to needs, more timely in its responses, more understanding of our caregivers' concerns and more effective in providing first-class health care for all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
A Progressive Conservative government in its second term will:
- actively promote the health and well-being of all citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador
- implement Phase II of the Provincial Wellness Plan, which will promote the priority objectives of healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco control, injury prevention, mental health promotion, child and youth development, environmental health and health protection through four key directions: strengthening partnerships and collaboration, developing and expanding wellness initiatives, increasing public awareness and enhancing capacity for health promotion
- continue to work with the Provincial Wellness Advisory Council to address wellness priorities strategically and effectively
- using a comprehensive school health approach, develop policies and guidelines, enhance curriculum and expand programs to support the creation of a healthy school environment
- proceed with a Healthy Eating in School Program, which involves implementing provincial guidelines for foods served and sold in school cafeterias, canteens, vending machines and events organized by or held in schools with the objective of encouraging healthy food choices in all school cafeterias and requiring the availability of healthy alternatives to junk food in school vending machines, eliminating junk food options
- target obesity in children as a critical public health concern, identifying and applying measures to address obesity
- expand the Born a Non-smoker Program, which effectively promotes the importance of a smokefree environment for newborns and their families
- review the current youth smoking prevention programs in schools to determine the additional supports and resources required for K-12 curriculum, school smoke-free policies and youth cessation programs
- develop health and physical education curricula to enhance and support healthy living in the K-12 school system and address the issues of physical inactivity and obesity among youth
- integrate the Strategic Action Plan for Recreation, Sport and Physical Activity with broader efforts focusing on health promotion and disease prevention across all age groups
- implement the Recreation and Sport Strategy [link], with its six key directions of increasing involvement and participation, improving access for all, strengthening public sector support of recreation and sport, reaching our potential through enhanced excellence, building human resource capacity, and building capacity through infrastructure
- engage the disability community in the development of an action plan to increase the involvement of persons with a disability in recreation and sport
- in cooperation with Sport Newfoundland and Labrador, assist Newfoundland and Labrador-based athletes for qualification and competition in provincial, national and international competitions, including the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and invite these athletes to participate in programs to promote healthy living and sport to students throughout Newfoundland and Labrador
- ensure access to health care remains among the province's highest priorities
- develop a wait time management plan that is provincially coordinated and focused on wait time reduction, monitoring and improving timely access
- develop new strategies to address major diseases in Newfoundland and Labrador such as diabetes, stroke, cancer and childhood obesity, including provisions for research, prevention, diagnosis and treatment; for example, expand early detection programs for colorectal, cervical, breast and other cancers
- review the province's inventory of medical equipment, that would include diagnostic imaging, laboratory services, critical care, surgical/operating room and emergency services, to ensure the equipment meets current standards; and review the training of staff operating such equipment to ensure their skills meet current standards
- purchase a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, a powerful medical diagnostic tool that, by enabling early diagnosis, can lead to early treatment and disease prevention
- commit to a redevelopment of hospitals in St. John's for enhanced acute care services
- commit to build a new acute care hospital in Corner Brook at a cost of $150 million
- follow through on the task force on the management of adverse health events and the related dissemination of public information; and implement the pending recommendations of the judicial Commission of Inquiry on estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PR) testing for breast cancer
- target retention, recruitment and training initiatives more effectively to ensure every Newfoundlander and Labradorian has timely access to a family physician
- through a $15-million expansion and $11.75 million in new annual operational costs, expand the number of spaces for Newfoundland and Labrador medical students at the Memorial University Medical School by 10% in the coming year and 30% within the next five years, bringing enrolment from the current 60 up to 66 next year and to 78 within five years
- through a $4-million investment, expand the number of spaces for Newfoundland and Labrador nursing students in the Bachelor of Nursing Program; and provide opportunities to enable Licensed Practical Nurses, if they so choose, to engage in additional training in pursuit of a Registered Nurse designation
- establish a dental bursary program, providing students with $25,000 a year for up to three years on the condition that they provide a year of service in a rural area of need for each year of bursary received
- develop a comprehensive human resource strategy that reflects new models of service delivery and would have all health disciplines engaged to the full scope of practice
- in consultation with the physicians' licensing authority, review the certification requirements for physicians wishing to practise in Newfoundland and Labrador
- provide additional human resources to the province's hospitals to assist with the non-urgent visits to our Emergency Departments
- eliminate ambulance fee charges for inter-facility transfers at an estimated cost of $750,000
- increase the medical transportation program over five years, to assist with reimbursement of claimable expenses under the Medical Transportation Assistance Program for residents that incur significant travel costs in order to receive medical treatment
- continue to implement the Mental Health Services Strategy and the Mental Health and Addictions Policy Framework [link]
- enhance the provincial gambling strategy, incorporating prevention and treatment strategies based on research and consultation; and upon completion of the ongoing video lottery terminal reduction initiative, further reduce the number of VLTs in the province by at least 5%, resulting in a total reduction of 20%
- through consultation with the physician community, explore options to fully implement the electronic medical records in physicians' offices throughout the province in preparation for a system-wide "Electronic Health Record", subject to the availability of funding through the Canada Health Infoway and provincial funds
- be vigilant in ensuring the province's preparedness for pandemics and other public health emergencies
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