Sackville - Leader David Coon said a Green government would build out a community-based health care system that would put citizens and care givers needs before private companies’ profits.

Coon released the party’s commitment to health care reform today, saying health policy should be guided by engaged citizens, an increased focus on illness prevention, more local health care centers, shorter wait times for essential care and an immediate creation of 40 new nurse practitioner positions in the province.

“We’ve all witnessed the decline in our public health care system, whether it’s by personally experiencing the over-crowded emergency rooms or long wait times to get a family doctor or extra care for our aging parents and grandparents. Tinkering around the edges of health care reform is not working. If we start to rebuild the system, taking a community-centered focus with family health teams in the lead, we will get the expert care our family members both need and deserve.”

Coon says the other parties talk about transforming the way we do things in health care or seniors care, but that without transforming the system itself, the results will continue to be nothing more than cosmetic. “Too many people will continue to be poorly served or fall through the cracks of the system altogether. Those who deliver our public services will continue to burn out, and it will become ever more difficult to recruit new employees,” he said.

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The Green Party health care policy includes commitments to:

• Cancel the contract with the private company Medavie for managing our extra-mural health services and return management responsibilities to Horizon and Vitalité.
• Place our ambulance services under public management and initiate a public inquiry into how they can be improved.  
• Give hospitals the authority to make decisions about how best to provide timely access and care to patients and enable all staff to collaborate to implement them.
• Reduce wait times for primary health care, create 40 new nurse practitioner positions, and allow nurse practitioners and pharmacists to bill Medicare for health services.
• Add eight new community health-care centers staffed by collaborative family health care teams, including mental health professionals and nurse practitioners.
• Integrate midwives into each of New Brunswick’s health regions.

The full platform can be found here: http://www.greenpartynb.ca/2018_platform

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Media Contact: Shannon Carmont
506.440.4980
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