Santé Québec is preparing for the worst as summer approaches, but is reviving last year’s measures that helped avoid many service disruptions across the province.
The summer of 2025 was marked by risks of service disruption in 1339 cases across the province’s health facilities, but the response measures prevented 1029 of them. This still means that there were 310, but Santé Québec managed to implement mitigation measures in these cases, imperfect measures, but which still allowed access to services.
In preparation since February
“We started preparing for the summer period as early as February with the establishments for which we anticipated service disruptions during the summer period,” explains Cynthia Cloutier, director of coordination of access to care and services.
Most of the higher-risk facilities have already prepared plans that include scheduling employee vacations, redeploying staff to more vulnerable departments, and setting aside contingency funds. “One facility even went so far as to run a summer simulation. They simulated service disruption scenarios with the management team to see if it would happen, what actions would be taken, what levers could be activated, what human resources measures could be implemented, and what internal measures could be taken,” explains Cloutier.
She explains that there are “challenges in the emergency department, and it’s more difficult in the summer with the holidays.” Some facilities have even set up their own internal mobile teams to fill the gaps.
The large national mobile team, comprised of 320 people dedicated to serving all of Quebec in times of need, includes healthcare professionals from various fields—nurses, licensed practical nurses, and personal care attendants—but social workers have also been added, notably special education teachers and social workers. They are still looking for respiratory therapists to join the team, but “it’s a little harder to find them right now,” acknowledges Cloutier.
One of the problems with the mobile team, however, is that it has already been deployed since its creation, mainly in Abitibi, on the North Shore and in the Outaouais. “But in the last year, we have managed to open it up to a few regions to meet specific needs, precisely to avoid service disruptions,” the manager points out.
The entire issue of service disruptions boils down to this reality: the staff shortage in the network, which becomes critical during holiday periods. It is precisely because of this staffing shortage in these regions that the mobile team was deployed. As a result, it isn’t “flying” as much as initially envisioned, acknowledges Cynthia Cloutier. “We’re trying to increase its deployment. We’re evaluating the situation. Now, other regions can submit requests for their needs, which wasn’t the case at one point. So, we’re currently exploring how to expand it and maximize the mobile team’s potential to prevent service disruptions.”
And the network is well aware of one reality: it is in remote regions that labor shortages hit hardest. “Often, service disruptions occur in remote regions, unfortunately, because these are very small teams that are sometimes experiencing service disruptions year-round, always just one resource away from being able to cope all year long because they have difficulty recruiting staff. It’s always linked to a general labor shortage. We see it in specialized medicine as well, for example.”
Obstetrics
One problem raised repeatedly remains obstetrics, and Santé Québec indicates that work is underway to address the availability of obstetric services, which can lead to the worst-case scenario: having to transport a pregnant patient over long distances. “In our service disruption process, there are several steps. We try the mobile team, we sometimes try a general appeal; can other facilities provide support? Unfortunately, as a last resort, there are service corridors where I have to send a pregnant woman to another region or to a facility in her region, which, unfortunately, in regions like Abitibi and the North Shore, is sometimes very far away.”
It is difficult to assess the service disruption avoidance rate of 77 per cent by summer 2025 because there is no comparative data for previous years. This time, a comparison will be possible since we will be working with exactly the same data as last year.
Since Santé Québec’s goal is to do better year after year, we will know at the end of the summer season whether the Crown corporation has passed the test of continuous improvement.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
