About 125 people came out for a town hall meeting on health care in Charlottetown Monday night.

At the Liberal-sponsored event, Health and Wellness Minister Cory Deagle made two major health-care announcements.

Deagle told the crowd the province is set to announce that it is adding 200 private long-term care beds. That will cost about $100 million.

Deagle said that should help free up badly needed hospital beds that are currently tied up with people who are not sick, but are waiting for a long-term care bed.

Those beds should be ready in the next 18 to 24 months, he said.

“The private sector can move much faster than government can,” said Deagle.

The meeting, which organizers moved to a larger venue that could hold up to 450 people, was held at a time when health care on the Island is facing significant upheaval.

Last week, Melanie Fraser left her role as CEO of Health P.E.I., and Laurae Kloschinsky was appointed interim CEO. The leadership shakeup followed a letter signed by 93 family doctors sent to the premier and health minister, saying they’d lost confidence in Fraser’s leadership.

‘Start booking the damn things’

Deagle also confirmed that the private cataract clinic in Charlottetown has cancelled all of its appointments for the month of March because it has run out of money.

The clinic is private but funded by the provincial government. The new provincial budget doesn’t start until April 1.

Deagle called the situation “ridiculous.”

“I said, ‘Are you kidding me? … Well, start booking the damn things’ because there’s no reason that you should have to wait when we have operating rooms sitting empty,” Deagle told a woman whose loved one has been waiting months for surgery.

“So, I’ve told them to start booking again … We’ll try and maybe get you in early April because you shouldn’t have to wait that long.”

Political interference concerns

Deagle’s comments drew an immediate reaction from the crowd, with some attendees calling out, “that’s political.”

Michele Beaton, a former Green Party MLA who is running again for the party, said the clinic should be public — not private.

“Then we wouldn’t have had to have you call Health P.E.I. tomorrow to get an individual a surgery,” said Beaton.

“That is not how this should happen because that means somebody else’s family member is not going to get their surgery.”

Deagle defended himself, saying he has people advocating to him all the time.

“What are we elected for?” Deagle asked.

Randy Goodman, a former member of the Health P.E.I. board, raised concerns about political interference in the agency.

“P.E.I. has struggled to complete the original goal of Health P.E.I. which was to be an arm’s length Crown corporation that’s allowed to think beyond the election cycle,” said Goodman.

“Current decisions [are] driven by the premier, treasury board, cabinet, health minister and the flavour of the election rather than long-term planning. In fact, in his interview last week, Premier [Rob] Lantz said the CEO works at the behest of the premier. Apparently he hasn’t read the legislation or the accountability agreement, that the CEO actually reports to the board.”

‘I need a doctor’

A number of attendees spoke about living without a family doctor.

Judy Hughes was one of them. She asked people in the room who did not have a family doctor to stand up.

Nearly half of the room stood. 

“There’s nowhere to go,” she said.

As of Feb. 28, about 33,500 Islanders were on the provincial patient registry waiting to be matched with a family doctor or nurse practitioner.

Gordon Gallant, 74, who has undergone heart surgery and lives with diabetes and an immune deficiency, said he is still without a family doctor.

“I need a doctor,” Gallant told the room.

“There’s too many of us that need doctors. We’re seniors. We’re trying to live at home. We’re trying to do the best we can. But we also need the support of doctors.” 

Emily Sullivan said she will lose her family doctor in May and worries about what that means for her care.

“This past winter I was quite ill, hospitalized and in the ICU for a while,” she said. “I am having out-patient tests, which I was hoping I would have a family doctor to provide some direction, after the test is performed. It has taken, just to schedule a test from a clerk, two to four months depending on the test.”