A Nova Scotia family’s creative solution to being closer to their ailing mother was in the spotlight in the provincial legislature Wednesday.

The 80-year-old mother of Ray and Nan McFadgen suffers from Alzheimer’s, but lives in a nursing home in Truro, about 45 minutes away from the family’s home in Pictou, N.S.

“I'm a nurse by profession and I know where she's headed with her disease, and I know that she's going to have to be fed, she's going to have a lot of needs that I want to participate in as her daughter,” said Nan.

For the last year, they’ve been pushing to have her moved, and even pitched a possible fix to the health department: a nursing home swap.

“If somebody in Pictou is waiting for a bed in Truro, and vice versa, they could switch locations at no cost to the department of health,” Ray explained.

The McFadgens even took it upon themselves to find a family willing to make the bed swap, but the health department turned them down, citing concerns it could be seen as queue jumping.

“When you take a new person into a nursing home then it means that somebody else on the list had to be overlooked for that specific nursing home,” Health Minister Leo Glavine said Wednesday.

Interim NDP Leader Maureen MacDonald raised the McFadgen’s situation in the provincial legislature on Wednesday.

Just because you can’t accommodate everyone, MacDonald said, doesn’t mean you can’t accommodate anyone, she argued, saying she sees no harm in the swap as long as it isn’t keeping someone else from getting a bed.

“It makes no sense to me actually. There's no queue jumping that's going on here. These are two people who are already in long term care,” she said.

Glavine said he has asked his department to give him the details of the case and the rationale behind turning down the McFadgens.

“I can't make any commitment that it will be changed, but I'm absolutely prepared to look at it and see if there are special circumstances here that are in play,” he said.

The McFadgens say they’re hoping to get a meeting with the health minister to pitch their idea to him in person.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jacqueline Foster