Fewer health care service disruptions this summer: Santé Québec

A vacant room in the emergency ward at The Montreal Children's Hospital on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Montreal. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi)

More than 1,000 service disruptions, including the temporary closure of health care services or unavailability of care, were avoided this summer, according to Santé Québec.

In a press release issued on Wednesday, the corporation shared data from its first summer review, which it described as positive.

Between May 15 and Sept. 15, 1,339 service disruptions were recorded, of which three-quarters (1,029) were avoided.

That means, according to Santé Québec’s estimates, that there were 310 actual disruptions across the entire health care network.

“We are very satisfied with the situation this summer. There is still room for improvement, and we hope that every summer will bring a better situation with greater predictability,” said Véronique Wilson, assistant director general of network coordination and operations support at Santé Québec. “We think we’ll get there, but for me, what’s important is to put mechanisms in place to ensure that our population will always have access, regardless of the situation or service disruption that may arise.”

There were also mitigation measures in place for the temporary service closures, pointed out Maryse Poupart, the vice president of health and social services coordination at Santé Québec.

“Objectively speaking, we want care and services to be provided in as normal a setting as possible,” she said. “Our job is to ensure that care and services are provided throughout Quebec. That’s why we’re taking a positive view, even though it’s not perfect. Positive, first of all, because the number [of service disruptions] is lower, and [for those] that did occur, we worked together to find solutions to resolve them.”

Patient transfers

When a service or care cannot be provided, institutions must first try to find internal solutions, said Wilson.

“I would say that 80 per cent of our service disruptions are resolved this way,” she said.

If that doesn’t work, Santé Québec says it will call on others to come and lend a hand or bring in its mobile staff.

If a service disruption is unavoidable, a contingency plan is employed.

For example, in one incident, some obstetrics patients at Saint-Eustache Hospital had to be transferred 30 kilometres away to Saint-Jérôme Hospital.

However, realistically, not all regions can transfer patients to nearby facilities, as some institutions can be far apart.

Julie Bouchard, president of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), made a point of bringing this up two weeks ago in an interview about reducing the number of hours worked in the network.

“We hear horror stories every day,” she said, giving the example of a patient who travels an hour and a half by car to receive hemodialysis treatments three times a week.

Santé Québec is trying to stay close to home, but the province is a large territory, Wilson points out.

“When that’s not possible, what’s important to us is to have quality, safe services for all our clients,” she said. “That’s where we’ll set up corridors. Sometimes the corridor is longer, but everything is done with the safety of our clients in mind.”

New tool for greater predictability

This summer, Santé Québec introduced a new tool for reporting precarious situations, which institutions can fill out interactively.

Santé Québec then collects the data and creates a picture of service disruptions and daily monitoring.

“It’s a real-time tool,” explained Wilson. “As soon as institutions have a planned shortfall, they notify us, and the high level of detail allows us to take very targeted action.”

The form will eventually indicate which facility is experiencing difficulty, which clients are affected and what type of professionals are required.

“The institutions are in control. They manage their environment and their territory, and what we wanted on our side was that little extra, which is visibility and predictability in assessing the various needs for the summer period,” added Poupart.

Santé Québec also launched an appeal for people to come and support staff in places where needs are most pressing.

Calls for help are not new in the health care network, but Poupart said she believes that the summer yielded better results thanks to the arrival of Santé Québec, allowing calls to be made “on a larger scale.”

The deployment of a mobile team, mostly patient attendants and nurses who travelled in five regions this summer, also helped to avoid certain service closures.

The 260-member team mainly moved between Outaouais, Côte-Nord, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Chaudière-Appalaches and the Laurentians.

– This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 8, 2025.

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