Finance Committee on Oct. 15th, 2012

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here.

We are talking about tourism, and I fully agree that this activity has amazing effects on the economy. That's very important. The government recognizes that, and Minister Bernier is working on it.

My question is for Dr. Tétreault, from St. Boniface Hospital.

Your submission was absolutely incredible, Dr. Tétreault. You have addressed a number of things that we have been repeating over and over again, things like demographics. In the words of your submission, there's a remarkable increase in life expectancy for those over 65 and particularly for those over 85, and fostering a research environment at what you are calling a centre for health care innovation in Canada to assist an elderly population to remain healthy and active in the workplace is of great interest to me and to Canada.

I find it very interesting that your submission focuses on what we've been saying, which is to create some jobs to take care of those vulnerable people in our society and to make sure that we use every dollar efficiently. The 70% of the time that is unfortunately wasted by our nurses, as indicated in your proposal, searching for tools or implements or equipment that they need restricts them from patient care.

I encourage everyone to read the deck that you provided.

The job creation elements in your proposal are fantastic. By partnering business in innovation and in commercialization with the health care industry, there is money to be made and there are jobs to be created, so I appreciate everything you've put forward in your submission.

I want to give you an opportunity to address the letters of support that you distributed. I want to thank you for that.

As an MP in your riding, I get calls about the things you've been doing to educate other hospitals and other industries. I get calls about what you've been doing. You've been asked across the country and in other parts of the world to come and teach this lean program that you are advocating to reduce inefficiencies, etc. You've been approached by people who are interested in this idea of a centre for excellence. You've submitted a couple of letters of support.

I want you to tell us what these are. Give us a snapshot of what you've done for these two agencies that leads us to believe that what you're saying is going to help our economy and our health care industry to progress.

[Dr. Michel Tétreault]

Thank you, and thank you for the kind words.

John Toussaint is one of the world leaders in the lean movement. He's the CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, and as such has dealt with 60 organizations. We collaborate already quite closely with them in terms of how we can exchange our experiences, our expertise, and our knowledge among hospitals. We are developing programs as we speak as to how to more effectively and efficiently do that.

Interestingly, we had the first Canadian lean summer school in June in Winnipeg. We called it "summer school” because it was in June. This one happened to be francophone, so we had every one of Quebec's teaching institutions, le CHU de Genève, and le CHU Mont-Godinne in Belgique come to see us.

Some of the people who came were the people in charge of quality improvement at the Jewish General Hospital. When they went home, Dr. Stern, who wrote one of the letters, called me and said, “Jesus, these guys say you're so far ahead of us, I have to come and see you.”

We have a fair number of people who come to see us. In a few weeks the University Health Network in Toronto is sending 16 people to come to see what we're about. We think that if we make it more formal and more official and develop the curriculum a bit more, we can have a positive influence.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I agree. I know that you fly all over the place, while you're also the very important president and CEO of a hospital. I can see why you're here today.

Novadaq also submitted a letter of support. I'm going to read from it. Their letter says:Indeed, Novadaq's platform technology had its origin in Winnipeg and the St. Boniface Hospital Research Center was instrumental during various phases of the technology innovation and development. This gives support to this idea of a centre in your location.

I want to give you an opportunity to talk about cost, because we haven't addressed that issue. I see in the deck that it's a fairly minimal cost and that for any cost that is provided, you expect a return on business innovation and you expect a return on job creation. I want you to comment on that a little bit.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peggy Nash]

Be very brief, Mr. Tétreault. We're out of time.

[Dr. Michel Tétreault]

Briefly, there are two pieces.

On the research part, the return doesn't come to the hospital but to society, because the jobs are created outside of us by the people we help along.

On the health care side, our own return on investment is so far about six to one: for every dollar the hospital has put in, we've gotten six back. If we multiply that by the number of hospitals in the country.... I'll let you do the math.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's very good. Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peggy Nash]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

I want to thank the witnesses.

Thank you, everyone.

The meeting is adjourned.