The pandemic exposed flaws in Quebec's health system. Frontline workers say it's time to fix them
CBC
Since the start of the pandemic two years ago, said Dr. Louis P. Perrault, a veteran Montreal cardiac surgeon, the province's beleaguered health-care system has been held together mostly through the sheer will of staff.
"But there's a limit to the triumph of the human spirit to save the system," said Perrault, president of Quebec's Association of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons.
He's watched staff work countless extra hours to keep the system going, but he said he doesn't believe the situation is sustainable.
Chronic underfunding, insufficient beds and inadequate staffing have plagued the system for years, he said: COVID-19 simply made it more glaring.
"That's a perfect storm to crash a system that was already broken," said Perrault.
As the province lifts further restrictions Monday, Perrault and other health-care workers say that unless the system undergoes a major overhaul, the consequences will be disastrous.
Watch | The system was already broken, this cardiac surgeon says:
Quebec — and Canada as a whole — has fewer hospital beds per capita than much of the developed world.
Japan and Korea have the highest ratio, with 13 and 12 beds per 1,000 inhabitants respectively, according to 2019 data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
France, with six beds per 1,000 inhabitants, has more than double that of Canada, which has 2.5.
Prior to the pandemic, the province's hospitals were designed to operate at maximum capacity to avoid wasting resources and staff, said Maude Laberge, a professor in health economics at Université Laval.
"Basically, we want to use our beds," she said.
Denis Goulet, a Quebec historian specializing in health care and epidemics, said the decline in hospital capacity is the result of government reforms and cuts that began in the 1980s.
Long wait times and a lack of adequate frontline care have been problems for years prior to the pandemic, as successive governments have sought to "rationalize resources," Goulet said.
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