Nova Scotia’s premier says timelines to address healthcare are coming soon.

The PC government released their Action for Health plan in April which identified core issues and offered six broad solutions for the provincial healthcare system.

Opposition members have been critical of the plan for not providing timelines to go along with the solutions. Following a cabinet meeting Thursday, Tim Houston told reporters they’re still working on it.

“We did commit to add some dates and some benchmarks and that work is ongoing,” said Houston. “I think the commitment was Nova Scotians would start to see that heading into early summer, which we’re at now and I suspect that those things are coming soon.”

Houston campaigned and won the August 2021 provincial election on a promise to fix healthcare.

His government inherited a system with tens of thousands of Nova Scotians on a family doctor waitlist, ambulances lined up and waiting hours to offload patients at hospitals, emergency rooms closed for staffing shortages, long backlogs of people waiting for surgeries and a laundry of other issues. Houston admits there is a lot of work to do but some of the changes are already having a positive impact.

“There’s lots of anecdotal stories about how difficult things are in the healthcare system. There’s also lots of anecdotal stories about how things are improving. I’ve certainly heard from paramedics who will tell me, at the end of a day I was able to do this many more calls because I didn’t have to do these transfers,” said Houston. “Now they’ll be saying, I was able to do this many more calls because I was able to offload my patient. So, there’s a lot of positive anecdotal stories as well.”

The premier was referring to the new direct to triage policy that came into effect June 1 allowing paramedics to leave low risk patients in the care of waiting room staff instead of staying with them until they are seen by a doctor.

The PCs also made permanent a pilot project launched under the previous government which created a fleet of vehicles dedicated to patient transfers.

Houston says those are a couple of examples of changes that are improving healthcare for Nova Scotians and there are more to come.

“I would say to Nova Scotians that they should know, number one, that this is our number one focus as a government,” said Houston. “They should see that commitment from the amount of changes we’ve made which have come from healthcare workers. They should see that commitment in the plan that’s been put forward before them and look, they’ll start to see that in their communities, and some of that is happening already.”

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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