By Mario deSantis, January 31, 2000

The downsizing and restructuring of the healthcare industry initiated in Canada in the early 90's when, in a span of a decade, health care expenditures increased approximately from one quarter to one third of governmental provincial budgets. This downsizing and restructuring of the health care system had the primary goal to integrate the various health care facilities and related services within a geographical region and reduce the number of the acknowledged oversupply of hospital beds. The downsizing we experienced in the latter part of the 90's had an altogether different flavour and was spearheaded by our bureaucratic technocrats.

These bureaucratic technocrats ganged together all across Canada to re-engineer the health system by using ongoing obsolete information technologies to increase the productivity of medical and nursing services. In 1995, Saskatchewan Health was getting ready for the implementation of the Saskatchewan Health Information Network(1) (SHIN), the largest information technology undertaking ever mandated in the province; in this same year of 1995, the Ministry of Health of Manitoba was planning a $100 Million initiative to develop a health information network over a 5 year period, Nova Scotia was undertaking an information technology initiative expected to cost approximately $300 Million over a three year period, and all other provinces were engaging in these expensive information technology projects(2).

Millions and millions of dollars have been wasted all across Canada for re-engineering health care through the implementation of Information Technology projects and this re-engineering has caused further spinoffs in the mismanagement of other resources. Therefore, the health care crisis is a Canada wide problem and it is mostly due to the incompetence of our politicians and bureaucrats, be in Saskatchewan or elsewhere.

And when I hear Saskatchewan healthcare bureaucrats stating that today's nursing shortage is a Canadian problem(3), I become more inflamed than ever thinking how these incompetent and deceptive bureaucrats first gang together to make a mess of health care across Canada, and then cover up their local responsibilities by saying for instance that the nursing shortage is a Canadian wide problem.

Our current politicians and bureaucrats are masters of deception. While Saskatchewan healthcare spending is at an all time high of 40% of the provincial budget, the Chair of the Regina Health District says "We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate... the underfunding which forces us to operate in a deficit position(4)." At the same time Pat Atkinson, Minister of Health, states that a major review of the health care system will be unveiled this Spring(5), and that this review would not include the participation of the Provincial Auditor, Wayne Strelioff, since he is a limited accountant who doesn't go beyond value-for-money analysis. In stating such a derogatory remark about our Provincial Auditor, Pat Atkinson shows that either she has not read any of the Provincial Auditor's Reports or that she is a liar.

Anyhow, it is not by having more money or having additional restructuring that we can cure health care. What we need, and what everybody forgot, is the recognition that we must "meet people's real needs, and... involve all the people to make care cost-effective(6)." Yes, this is democracy, the involvement of all the people, and this has never happened under the governmental direction of Premier Roy Romanow and his Tin Pot dictators.

General reference and endnotes

General reference: articles by Mario deSantis, published by North Central Internet News

1. A Historical Perspective of The Saskatchewan Health Information Network, by Mario deSantis and James deSantis, March 1998 http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-SHIN.htm

2. Saskatchewan Health Information Technology Architecture Overview, Appendix A, Saskatchewan Health, April 1995.

3. Saskatchewan Nursing Shortage: Shifting the blame for our own Incompetence, by Mario deSantis, November 27, 1999 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/desantis89/SHD-Nurs-Nov29-99.html

4. Healthcare in Saskatchewan: Getting ready for re-reengineering and shifting the blame, by Mario deSantis, October 31, 1999

5. Healthcare to go under microscope, by Murray Mandryk, The StarPhoenix, January 29, 2000

6. Invitation by the Regina Health Board to comment on the Atkinson Report, by Mario deSantis, May 8, 1992 http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-Atkinson-may08-92.htm