N.S. community health-care clinics call for more sustainable, long-term funding

As the surgery backlog and the number of Nova Scotians without a family doctor continue to climb, one solution from those who work in the health-care field is to increase funding for community health-care clinics.

At last count, roughly 10 per cent of Nova Scotia’s population, or 92,000 people, are without a family doctor.

And as the patient waitlist continues to reach record highs, there are community-based health clinics — like the North End Community Health Centre in Halifax — that say they’re helping ease the strain on the beleaguered health-care system by offering more primary care services.

Marie-France LeBlanc, the executive director with the North End Community Health Centre, says community clinics need more stable and appropriate funding to continue to help fill the gap within health services.

“We’re behind the times as a province in recognizing that community health centres are a solution to a problem,” said LeBlanc. “We’ve been a solution for a long time, it’s just we’ve been doing it on our own and on the back of not-for-profits.”

A number of community health-care clinics appeared before the province’s public accounts committee, suggesting there’s much more they can do with proper funding.

“Keeping a building well and alive and functioning and to offer special programming — we need that kind of funding,” said Lorraine Burch, executive director of Our Health Centre in Chester, N.S.

Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservative government campaigned during the summer election on a promise to fix the health-care system and said they’d do it through record spending.

These health-care professionals say increased funding could go a long way, but there’s a disconnect between them, the clinic providers, and the government.

They say health-care clinics should be at the table during budget discussions.

“When we go to the Department of Health, they ask us to go to NSH [Nova Scotia Health], and when we go to NSH, they ask us to go to the Department of Health,” said LeBlanc.

Burch says she’s optimistic because this marks the first time her organization has been invited to speak to the government.

“We’ve been advocating for this kind of audience, and to be at the table is where decisions are made,” said Burch. “It seems logical to us. I don’t know why it takes government so long to reach that decision.”

The government is looking at exploring all options for providing the best primary care, including consulting with community providers.

“We just want to make sure that we are looking at everything, so as I said, there aren’t any unintended consequences or that we are providing the best services for a particular community,” said Jeannine Lagassé, deputy minister with the department of health and wellness.

The NDP says funding community clinics is the way forward in dealing with the health-care crisis, but the time for talk is over.

“We hear that the department is willing to have discussions, but what we really need is concrete action,” said Susan LeBlanc, the NDP health critic. “We see that many of these centres are in crisis, they are literally not able to do what they need to be doing to serve the communities.”

The Liberals say the Houston government promised to fix the health-care system, but say the doctor waitlist only continues to grow, and the surgery backlog has grown to 27,000 Nova Scotians waiting for a procedure.

“Nova Scotians need to know when they can expect to see results, but without a definitive plan, the situation will only get worse,” said Liberal health critic Patricia Arab.

The Houston government has said the doctor waitlist will get worse before it gets better. In September, a month after the PCs were elected, there were 75,000 people on the physician waitlist. That number has now climbed to 92,000.

The province says recruitment and retention efforts are ramping up to attract family doctors.

“There are a variety of factors as to why that number goes up and goes down,” said Lagassé.

“Sometimes it has to do with retirements or people leaving practice and moving out of the province and people moving into the province and so there is a number of different factors that can go into why the list goes up and down each month.”