The New Brunswick Health Council (NBHC) is releasing a second brief this year, focusing on the quality of health services with respect to the health system sustainability challenge. The brief addresses the variability in health service quality within the province and the need for an effective provincial accountability framework to improve performance.
“When we analyze this variability, we see that some geographic areas perform very poorly, but also that some others perform very well,” says Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the NBHC. “We need to see how the provincial health system can learn from the geographic areas that perform better in order to improve the quality of health services in other areas of the province.”
To address this, the brief first describes the need for an effective provincial accountability framework that must include benchmarking and the setting of performance targets.
The brief also puts forth two priority areas for the health system:
a) prioritize the primary health sector as well as mental health and addiction services, and
b) focus its efforts on two of the six dimensions of quality, namely accessibility and appropriateness, since the improvement of these two will have a ripple effect on the other dimensions of quality.
The brief is available online at nbhc.ca
The NBHC has been established as an independent organization that measures, monitors and evaluates New Brunswick’s health system performance through a citizen-centered dual mandate of performance measurement and citizen engagement.
MEDIA CONTACTS
New Brunswick Health Council: Christine Paré, 506-869-6714, christine.pare@nbhc.ca