CALEB NICKERSON

SHAWVILLE Oct. 7, 2019

Last Monday evening, a cohort of representatives from the the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO), held a public forum at the CAP in Shawville. Attendees from the public were significantly outnumbered by staff and officials from the health care authority, who counted more than a dozen.

The public meeting took place almost entirely in French, and was led by CISSSO’s new Director General Josée Filion. The meeting in Shawville was just one of several that the group would be conducting throughout the enormous territory, which stretches from Maniwaki to Gatineau.

Sylvie Marchand, the deputy commissioner of complaints and quality of service, gave a detailed breakdown of the complaints for 2018/19. Back in September, La Presse, published a story revealing that the Gatineau Hospital is the worst in the province for deaths due to medical error, with 34 over the last ten years. The story also showed that the Hull Hospital had 15 preventable deaths over the last 20 years.

Marchand pointed out that malpractice makes up a very small portion of their overall complaints (0.3 per cent) and went over how complaints are assessed by staff. The number of complaints was up from the previous period, (478 compared to 390 in 2017/18 and 425 in 2015/16).

Filion gave an overview of the services offered by CISSSO and their 85 institutions throughout the region, employing 9,795 people. She mentioned some of the accomplishments they had made over the past year, including the opening of the new cafeteria at Pontiac Community Hospital.

The financial report showed that CISSSO had a deficit of $381,695, which is relatively small when compared to the overall annual budget of nearly a billion dollars (revenues were $931,469,919 compared to expenses of $931,851,614).

She also spoke about the organization’s priorities, which include a balanced budget, increased hiring efforts and the establishment of a satellite campus for McGill University at the Gatineau Hospital by 2020, among others.

During the public question period, Rosalie Boucher, the director of the Centre Intervalle, a mental health residence in Fort Coulonge, detailed her issues with the paperwork her organization has to file every year. She explained that one misplaced document out of the stack can jeopardize their funding application.

“For 25, 26 years, we’ve been fighting to get new money and we never do,” she said, noting that her staff takes care of 17 patients from all across the region.

She said that she wasn’t very satisfied with the response she got from the officials at the meeting, but was glad to have voiced her grievances.

“I’m not quite satisfied, but what can you do?” she said. “At least we were heard and we said what we have to say.”

Filion declined to be interviewed in English after the meeting, instead passing the responsibility to her deputy Stéphane Lance. He said that they were working hard to address the short-staffing issue that has caused several interruptions to the obstetrics department at Pontiac Community Hospital. He said that they were fast-tracking staff from the area with an interest in obstetrics and had reached out to recently retired personnel to see if they were interested in part-time work.

He pointed out that small staff numbers at PCH mean that every absence from the schedule has a larger impact than in a larger hospital setting. He said that CISSSO would be taking steps to return some of the autonomy that the local healthcare system had before it was amalgamated.

“We’ve got to get away from the one size fits all, that’s decided in the city, and might not apply here,” he said, noting that the change would take place within a few months. “We’re going to have managers that are going to have their offices here instead of in the city.”

Lance said that two important managers will be relocated to the Pontiac in the coming months.

“There’s going to be two really key people that we’re reintroducing to the different municipalities,” he said. “The one person [is] going to be coordinating everything going on at the hospital. The other person is everything that’s outside the hospital, homecare, talking to community groups, talking to the politicians, talking to everyone that’s around and important in this area … Those people are going to have their offices here.”

“Everything used to work well before all the changes were brought about in 2015,” he added. “All the good things that used to work, that everyone said, ‘Oh we’re going to lose all that.’ That’s what we’ve got to make sure we bring back.”

When asked about the deficit, he said that the amount is tiny for an organization that spends between $2-3 million a day in operational costs.

In regards to the issues that Boucher had raised, he said that they don’t have that much leeway when it comes to budget deadlines, as they have to provide the ministry with complete data.

“We give them an amount of money, which is surely not enough, and then they do their business with that money,” he said. “In return, they have to produce the paperwork that’s required.”

He said the best remedy would be for the institutions to call CISSSO if they’re having difficulties meeting their deadlines.

In response to the article in La Presse and the negative light it cast on the organization, he said that they have to strive for a culture of excellence within the organization.

“It’s good that we have all those different pairs of glasses that look at what we do and tell us what we’re doing wrong and what we need to do better,” he said. “We have to welcome those things. We have to act on them.”