Green Party plans investment in Community-Based Primary Care

For Immediate Release

Toronto, Ontario – This week Green Party Deputy Leader Judy Smith-Torrie (Northumberland-Quinte West) and Leader Mike Schreiner (Simcoe-Grey) announced the Green Party’s plan to reform health care delivery, ensuring all Ontarians have access to quality community health services. The plan states that Green MPPs will re-prioritize funding to support doctors, nurse practitioners and other health professionals for community care clinics that are integrated with public health.

“Community care centres limit costly hospital visits and allow practitioners to provide quality responsive care within a dignified community setting,” said Smith-Torrie. “They also provide Ontarians better value for their health care dollar.”

Of the ten countries the government regularly surveys for comparison purposes, Canada and Ontario are dead last in timely access to primary care. In multi-disciplinary community care teams, all key primary health professionals work together to provide round the clock care. The Green Party plan would use each of Ontario’s more than 100,000 health care providers’ abilities to the fullest, creating more capacity and improving the quality of care.

Experts and citizens agree that Community Health Care Teams are the most efficient and effective way to deliver quality health care. Most recently, Public Priorities for Ontario’s Health System, a report of the Citizen’s Reference Panel on Ontario Health Services – assembled by MASS LBP and commissioned by PwC – the randomly selected participants agreed on the creation of and investment in such integrated community health care teams.

 “Putting communities in charge of local health care decisions will improve the sustainability and efficiency of our health care system,” said Schreiner. “It’s time that patients received timely access to the right treatment and diagnosis, when they need it.”

Green MPPs will:
• Invest $1.6 billion over four years in Community Care Centres, Aboriginal Health Access Centres and Family Health Teams, clinics and practices that team doctors with nurses, dieticians, psychologists, counsellors, physiotherapists and others.
• Establish a new goal of providing 50% of Ontarians with access to a family care team by 2016, rising to 90% by 2020.
• Amend profession-specific acts of regulated health care professions to allow members of those professions to practise to the full extent of their demonstrated competencies as verified by their respective regulatory bodies.
• Revamp the current fee-for-service pay model. Move towards salaried and other funding models (either alone or in combination) that expand access, patient-centred care and encourage health promotion and innovation.

For full details on the Green Party’s plan for Health go to:  http://www.gpo.ca/issues

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Rebecca Harrison
Director of Communications
Green Party of Ontario
(c) 905-999-5479
(e) rebeccaharrison@gpo.ca