Here are three things to know about Santé Québec.
Starting next month, Quebec’s entire health-care system, currently managed by more than two dozen organizations, will come under the control of a single agency: Santé Québec.
Santé Québec CEO Geneviève Biron has also said she plans to find “efficiencies.” During a recent series of media interviews, she said her first job is to find $1 billion in savings.
So what is Santé Québec and how is it supposed to change the health-care system? Here are three things to know:
How will the new agency work?
For the vast majority of Quebecers, health care is governed by 23 regional health authorities, known by the French acronyms CIUSSS, CISSS and, in the northern Jamésie area, CRSSS.
Several major hospitals and specialized institutes, which serve patients from across the province, are independent of those agencies.
On Dec. 1, all the health-care facilities managed by those regional authorities and the independent institutions will become part of Santé Québec.
In Montreal, that includes five CIUSSS, three independent hospitals — including the McGill University Health Centre — and the Montreal Heart Institute.
Under the new system, the health ministry will be responsible for policy and strategic planning, while Santé Québec will be responsible for day-to-day operations.
Why is the government doing this?
Dubé has also suggested that running the health-care system more like a business — with what he called “top gun” managers from the private sector — will create efficiencies.
The reform will also see all health-care facilities get an on-site manager — something that was cut during a 2015 health-care reform led by then-Liberal health minister Gaétan Barrette — which is intended to fix issues that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when individual facilities were unable to adapt to a rapidly spreading virus as they waited for instructions.
The reform will also put all health-care workers under a single employer and reduce the number of union bargaining units from 136 to four. That means workers will be able to transfer between facilities more easily without losing their seniority, Dubé has said, and patients can be offered appointments at any public facility in the province, such as one that used to be in a neighbouring CIUSSS, as well as in private facilities.
Biron has said the unified system will reduce competition for resources between different public health-care organizations and reduce the duplication of services.
What are the concerns?
Health-care unions have accused Santé Québec of being a back door to increased privatization. Biron was the president and CEO of Biron Health Group, a private health-care company founded by her father, for nearly seven years. Her sister took over as head of the company, which specializes in medical testing, in 2021.
In interviews, Biron has said her job at Santé Québec is to build a strong public health-care system but that Quebec currently needs to use private health-care providers to fill in the gaps.