Health Committee on Oct. 5th, 2009

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You have had those conversations and hopefully those practical tools are in process. I was quite intrigued by your idea of the rapid response line. Is that happening as we speak?

[Dr. Anne Doig]

Based on the conversation last week with Dr. Butler-Jones, my understanding is that there will be the development of a tool such as the one I just described to you--we hope quickly.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

My next question is for Ms. Bard.

I appreciate and understand the value of our commitment to the electronic health record and Infoway Canada. As we all know, it's quite a lengthy process to roll out electronic health systems and records. I'm not quite sure, in terms of the timeliness of what's happening in the next few months, that it is actually going to be of any value.

[Rachel Bard]

I appreciate the question.

But the message we want to give is that in moments of a crisis like that, it is important that we allow proper tracking and reporting of essential information. It's important to have the information in real time.

I can appreciate that we're in it now, but the importance here is for government to maintain its leadership and commitment. There will be other crises, and if we don't start having the information at the fingertip for people who are in the community or serving the patients so that they have the information in real time, I think we will be putting the professionals and the public in jeopardy. I think it's using every opportunity to try to improve that real-time information.

[Dr. Anne Doig]

Madam Chair, if I may, I'd like to jump in on that as well.

There is absolutely no question that the Canadian Medical Association has been saying very loudly that this promised money must be released to be used at the front line. A year from now--after it's been studied again and again--is not soon enough.

My colleague has very clearly articulated to you that it's not just a question of our response now to H1N1; it is a question of a very necessary and important clinical tool that we do not have access to that we should have access to. That money needs to flow.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

We've had some conversations about the federal response, that it seems fairly coordinated and certainly much improved. Are your organizations working with chapter levels or provincial levels? Do you feel you have good communication at a provincial organizational level to our provincial organizations?

I'd ask anyone to step into that one.

[Dr. Anne Doig]

The cma.ca website has a page that is dedicated to H1N1. It not only has the information that the CMA itself has made available, but it has links to all of the provincial and territorial medical associations and through them to the agencies that they are linked to. There's local public health and so on to make sure that we are doing the best we can to support our members in having access to information. We've already talked about the fact that it's not just access where they have to go and look for it. It's pushing things out to them that are going to be clinically useful in real time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Dr. Doig.

I want to thank the rest of the committee members.

We now have to go into three minutes of committee business.

I want to thank you so much for your presentations today. I would ask that anybody who needs to have a conversation with you to go outside the door so we can complete our committee business today.

I'll suspend for one minute to allow you to leave the room. Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]