The province’s health minister says officials with the provincial government are trying to come up with new ways to get doctors to come and stay to combat years of frequent emergency room closures in rural areas.
Weekly ER closures have become the norm at Strait Richmond Hospital in Evanston due to lack of physician coverage the past few years; regular overnight closures at Eastern Memorial Hospital in Canso due to a lack of nursing coverage started in May.
Randy Delorey, the province’s health minister and the MLA for Antigonish, says provincial officials are working on short-term and long-term solutions.
Delorey says they added 10 new residency positions for family doctors and 15 new residency positions for specialists in 2018.
“We know from past research that between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of residents stay in the province where they’ve trained,” he says. “With the addition of these 25 new seats for training, when these residents complete their training, these physicians are more likely than not to stay.”
Delorey says immigration is another a part of their long-term plan.
“Within the last year, we developed a new immigration stream which has brought in about 26 or so physicians into the province,” he says. “Because of that stream, it made Nova Scotia more inviting and attractive.”
Delorey says they’re also working on short term-solutions for rural coverage.
He says emergency room closures are a last resort.
“At the end of the day, when there’s a closure in a facility, it’s because the health authority does not have the sufficient compliment of health care professionals to maintain safe coverage.”
Delorey says the situation at Canso’s hospital is different because, unlike most hospital closures, it’s due to a lack of nurses, not doctors.
