NDP says money intended to reduce surgical wait times isn’t enough

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) BC’s NDP is calling the $10-million promised by government to help ease surgical wait times a drop in the bucket.

Contracting out a lot of surgeries or procedures to the private health care is not good news says NDP’s Health Critic Judy Darcy. “I think there is a big worry about draining doctors and nurses and other health-care professionals out of the public system into the private system.”

Darcy says it’s also not clear just how the cash will be spent. “I think this announcement barley makes a dent in what is a very very big problem. Thousands of people waiting as long as a year, two years for some of these procedures. This is very much a short-term fix and it’s a very small one at that,” she explains. “This seems like a glitzy press release that doesn’t really say anything about how we solve the problem in healthcare in the long run. We do have a serious wait-list problem.”

“It appears to be a one-time announcement and what we really need is a serious long-term strategy to address why we got here in the first place and that problem is that we are not doing the kind of innovation and investment into our public health care system that we need to,” she adds.

The provincial government says the $10 million will help expand access and increase the number of surgeries in the province, with a priority on patients who have spent more than 40 weeks waiting.
Not good enough says BC’s NDP following announcement of $10-million to help reduce surgical wait times

Nothing more than a glitzy press release says the NDP’s health critic after the government earmarks 10 million to improve surgery wait lists.

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