622 to 56: Montreal mental health team slashes wait lists in under a year

The West-Central Montreal health board has been able to drastically cut wait lists and times for mental health support in under a year.

There is some good news for patients seeking mental health services in Montreal.

The Montreal west-central health and social services centre (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal) is putting a spotlight on its work during Mental Health Week after slashing wait times and lists for those seeking mental health support.

The CIUSSS says the wait lists for care in June, 2024 was 622 to access services, and people were waiting more than 30 days to be evaluated or oriented to services.

In March of this year, the number was 56, and patients waited an average of seven days.

“I’m proud of what’s been achieved, because patients are getting access faster to the right care at the right time,” said outpatient coordinator Chantal Sfeir. “We’re able to offer care to this vulnerable clientele as rapidly as possible.”

The Quebec Health Ministry’s province-wide Adult Mental Health Access Mechanism (MASMA) helped to recruit new staff, streamline services by reducing barriers and ensuring uninterrupted support for patients.

Josée Bouchard is a head nurse and said the long wait times for services was frustrating.

“The problem is that we know that people need to have an intervention. We know people need to have care,” she said. “What happens is that sometimes, if a request is done and we only see the person a few months later, sometimes the condition has deteriorated.”

She said the deteriorated condition was painful for both the patient and the worker who, at times, would need to repair damage that could have been caught earlier, like with many illnesses.

“If we could have caught it on time, and now where the person’s case is so much heavier for them, it’s much more work for them,” said Bouchard. “It gets frustrating and discouraging, and that’s why we really want to be able to offer services as quick as possible.”

The CIUSSS decided to take an active approach to address the problem by bringing in new managers, listening to staff, and cutting through the directives and numbers to create a more efficient team ready to actively see patients and work in a healthy space.

Marie-Claire Belisle was one of those that were asked to look at the situation and find solutions to the backlog.

She was told to not obsess over the numbers.

“The idea was to give people a chance to remember why they were hired in the first place and reconnect with people, and reconnect with the patients, and talk about the powerlessness that we do have in the system, but then not to stop there, and to say, but what can we do?” she said.

Belisle said teams spoke to each other, found what made sense and what didn’t, and find ways to use their strengths as professionals.

She sat down with every member of the team and other clinical supervisors to determine what interested them and what things they needed to see to make the situation easier and more motivating for them.

“It’s like we’re going to try and find things that make sense for you in your profession, and if that causes a little bit of a wait for certain people, well, they would have waited a long time before. Now they’re just going to wait a little bit of time, and it just kept getting better and better and better,” she said.

Six weeks in, things had already begun to improve.

“The big change was because people believed in the management that came in,” said Bouchard. “It was people that worked with our strength, Marie-Claire’s strength, my strength. They had confidence in us, and they let us do little changes that were very effective, and we really worked on strengths with people.”

Seeing the wait times decrease dramatically is very encouraging for staff and helps the mental health of the worker as well.

“When you have certain issues, and you’re waiting, and you’re waiting, it becomes so demoralizing, so destabilizing that you really want to have the care, so when I see that finally, I know that it’s moving along, and people are getting the care, and people are seeing our intervenant (intervener),” said Bouchard. “I’m happy because, and the intervenants are happy too because they look at their waiting list and they come and say, ‘Oh, that’s good. Wow! The numbers are good,’ and they’re happy about their work.”

Belisle said her wish is that the health-care community and greater public continues to treat health-care workers’ mental health and to make sure they’re okay.

“It’s one of those first lessons you learn, definitely, as a nurse, is, if you can’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anybody else, and sometimes we forget that and we get lost in wanting to help others,” she said. “We’re there to listen to the people, but they also need to trust us, that we’re there for them at the end of the day, that that is why we’re there, and that there’s hope, as long as people keep showing up every day and smiling, that there’s hope that it’s going to get better.”