Q&A: Sante Quebec board member on agency's goals, privatization concerns

Seeta Ramdass talks about what she intends to bring to her new role as board member of Sante-Quebec and responds to concerns that the board's makeup could signal a shift towards a more business-oriented approach and the privatization of the province's health-care system.

This week, Quebecers learned more about the province's new health-care management agency, Santé Québec.

Fifteen people have been named to the board of directors and one of them is Seeta Ramdass, a Montrealer with more than two decades of experience in the public health and education fields.

Christiane Germain, co-founder and co-president of the Germain Hotels chain, was named as the head of the board.

The head of Quebec's new health-care agency is Geneviève Biron, the former CEO of Biron Groupe Santé, which operates in private health care. The board's makeup has raised concerns this could be signaling a shift towards a more business-oriented approach and the privatization of the province's health-care system.

In her first interview since being named to the board, Ramdass responded to those concerns, telling CTV News that she believes the new agency is an opportunity to take the best practices in the private sector and transfer them into the public health-care network to make patient outcomes better.

"For example, in the private sector, you get the customer or the client's feedback on products and services and that feedback is what shapes how you improve those products and services. Well, we'll be hopefully doing the same thing with Santé Québec," she said.

"We're going to take patient experiences, patient feedback and we're going to use that to make sure that we make the effective changes that will improve the services to the patients and the communities in their socio-cultural contexts and realities of where they live."