Health and Social Services Minister Jamie Ballem said yesterday that he is pleased with progress made at Thursday's meeting of Federal/Provincial/Territorial Health Ministers in Ottawa. He said that provincial and territorial requests for restored federal funding within the Canadian Health and Social Transfer and a built-in "expenditure escalator" were reinforced at the meeting, while acknowledging that discussions in this regard would be continued at the First Ministers' meeting in September.
"Ministers acknowledged that money is essential, but we focussed our discussions at this meeting on the priorities for investment and innovation for our future health system. There is important work to be done," said Ballem.
He said that he was pleased with the alignment of priorities for Prince Edward Island and the national priorities discussed at the meeting. These included: appropriate actions to assure the adequate supply and retention and appropriate regional distribution of nurses, doctors and other skilled health workers; means to ensure Canadians have assured access to appropriate primary and continuing health care at all times; provision of improved health infrastructure including modern equipment, improved diagnostic and treatment facilities and appropriate information technologies; ways to deal with pressing pharmaceutical issues; and means to measure the performance of health system components and support Canadians' efforts to stay healthy and reduce overall illness.
Officials have been asked to continue work on plans in these areas. "This is an extremely important area for our province, and I'm confident this work will assist Premiers in their discussions in August," said Ballem. He noted that Prince Edward Island is already implementing strategies to increase front-line health care capacity and investing in new health care facilities and equipment.
"I've learned at this meeting that Prince Edward Island is not taking a back seat to anyone in terms of the quality of our health system and the continuous improvements we are making", he said.