10 things you need to know about Bill 10

1. Why was Bill 10 created?

Bill 10 aims to provide a seamless and integrated continuum of care, broader access, a reduction in the fragmentation and duplication of care, and greater accountability by restructuring Quebec’s public healthcare system. As a further benefit, the government has estimated that the changes will result in cost-savings of roughly $220 million per year by eliminating a major layer of bureaucracy.

2. Which bureaucratic layer has disappeared?

Locally, the Montreal Health and Social Services Agency—which oversaw the area’s healthcare institutions and acted as their intermediary with the Ministry of Health and Social Services—has been eliminated. Also gone are equivalent Agencies in more than 30 other healthcare regions throughout Quebec.

Resident Faye Amdursky with Registered Nurse Annie Tremblay at the Donald Berman Maimonides Geriatric Centre, located in the new west-central healthcare network to which the JGH now belongs. Photo: Jean-Guy Paradis

3. How are healthcare institutions administered under the new system?

The entire province has been redivided into a new set of healthcare regions, each known as a CIUSSS, a Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux—an integrated university centre for health and social services. (In areas without university affiliation, a CIUSSS is known as a CISSS.) Because of its large population, Montreal is divided into several regions, with the JGH located in the CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal in west-central Montreal.

4. Who else is in the JGH’s CIUSSS?

• The Cavendish Health and Social Services Centre is committed to improving the health and well-being of residents in the boroughs of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Snowdon-West, and the cities of Côte Saint-Luc, Montreal West and Hampstead.

• The Constance-Lethbridge Rehabilitation Centre works with adults who have a motor disability, offering them individualized rehabilitation services that are focused on social integration and on maximizing their autonomy and participation in community life.

• The de la Montagne Health and Social Services Centre is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of residents of the Côte-des-Neiges district, the borough of Outremont, the Parc-Extension district, the Peter-McGill district in the borough of Ville-Marie, a portion of the borough of Plateau Mont-Royal, the Town of Mount Royal, and the City of Westmount.

• The Donald Berman Maimonides Geriatric Centre provides superior care and quality of life to individuals in its long-term care residence, in accredited homes and in intermediate residences.

• The Jewish Eldercare Centre is a long-term care facility that provides comprehensive and compassionate care to individuals with a loss of physical or cognitive autonomy. It provides high-quality care and quality of life in a safe and secure homelike environment.

• The MAB-Mackay Rehabilitation Centre provides adaptation, rehabilitation and social integration services to individuals with a significant and persistent disability. Clients include children and youths with motor impairments or communication disorders, and persons of all ages who are deaf, hard-of-hearing or who have a visual impairment.

• Miriam Home and Services ensures that individuals with intellectual disabilities are seen and treated as persons; experience love, friendship and continuity in their lives; and have a decent and appropriate place to  live, with meaningful  employment or occupation, and life-long opportunities for growth.

• Mount Sinai Hospital treats patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, using a global approach that includes education, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. It also delivers palliative care services and offers a homelike environment to those with serious chronic conditions.

Nurse Clinician Rena Bhasin provides primary care to a patient in CSSS de la Montagne, a member of the new west-central healthcare region that includes the JGH.

5. What is the advantage of this arrangement?

Partnerships and cooperative relationships will be much easier to forge among the nine member institutions in the CIUSSS, and this will help to improve the continuum of care and services.

6. What will the Board of the CIUSSS do?

Among the key responsibilities of the CIUSSS Board is managing the budgets of the member institutions and ensuring that the quality of care is maintained and upgraded. In addition, the Board will ensure that the continuum of care within the network—as required by the legislation and set in motion through the creation of the CIUSSS—is fully realized.

7. Now that the CIUSSS has its own Board of Directors, what happens to the Board of the JGH?

As required by the legislation, the JGH Board of Directors has disappeared, as have the boards in all of the healthcare institutions across Quebec. However, the JGH will have its own Advisory Committee, a seven-member supervisory body that may send policy recommendations to the CIUSSS Board. In addition, a Board of Governors is being put in place at the JGH.

These two bodies will help to ensure that the linguistic and cultural heritage of the JGH are maintained. They will also determine how best to spend the money that is raised by the JGH Foundation, and they will act as the hospital’s liaison with the Lady Davis Institute and, to a certain extent, with the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University.

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8. Without a board of directors of its own, isn’t the JGH in danger of losing its unique identity?

No. The new legislation protects any institution with a unique legacy, heritage and cultural identity. Furthermore, the JGH remains a legal entity with the right to retain ownership and control over its own assets, including its buildings, property, name and various possessions, such as medical equipment.

The elements that have distinguished the JGH for more than eight decades—the quality of its treatment, the compassion of its care, its warm family feelings and spirit, its Jewish values and heritage, and its openness to individuals of all cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds—remain in place.

9. Is the JGH still an officially bilingual institution?

Yes—and that protection is enshrined in law. In fact, even the west-central CIUSSS to which the JGH belongs has been officially designated as bilingual, thereby safeguarding anglophones’ access to health care and social services

10. When funds are donated to the JGH Foundation, can that money be used in another institution in the JGH’s CIUSSS?

No. The JGH Foundation has the right to transfer funds exclusively to the JGH, with all donations benefiting JGH patients.