Dartmouth General Hospital Under Pressure - Question Period

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health and Wellness. Yesterday the situation at the Dartmouth General Hospital reached a crisis level and not for the first time. There were 23 patients without beds. Fifteen of them were in the emergency department, completely blocking flow to emergency care, five were in overflow areas, and three were being treated in the family lounges. People waited hours for triage and elective surgeries were cancelled.

The Dartmouth General Hospital is constantly beyond capacity and needs assistance from the NSHA and the Central Zone. The waiting room is full of people without doctors. There are no beds available for the critically ill. They are filled with patients waiting for placement in a nursing home or transfer to Halifax.

Mr. Speaker, while we know that investments are being made for orthopaedics and other things in the Dartmouth General Hospital, none of that is going to stem this problem. Can the minister tell the House what the NSHA is doing now to alleviate the pressure on the Dartmouth General Hospital?

HON. RANDY DELOREY « » : As the member would be aware, as we talked about yesterday, I believe attaching people to primary care physicians and providing primary care services is one means to improve access to care and reduce pressures on emergency departments. That work is under way across the province, including Dartmouth.

I've previously mentioned through the immigration stream, Mr. Speaker, we've had five family physicians commence work in the Dartmouth area. Each of them who have been here since the Fall are taking on full patient loads because these are individuals who have several years of experience and are able to ramp up their practices very quickly.

We are taking the concerns very seriously and we're working to attach more people in Dartmouth and across the province to primary care services.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, five new family doctors in downtown Dartmouth is great; our office has referred lots of people to them. It's a drop in the bucket for what we need and it's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking about the Dartmouth General Hospital.

Doctors and nurses at the Dartmouth General have been ingenious when it comes to solving problems. We have heard about it from the minister, and we have heard about in this House. They established an offload program to actually help ambulances get back on the road way before we saw that in other facilities. Now that program is being expanded. They have had to do it. With a catchment of over 130,000 people - 130,000 people, that's the number of people on Cape Breton Island - they're one of the largest hospitals in the province. They cannot continue to operate with 25 per cent of their beds full of patients waiting for transfer and no added resources.

Mr. Speaker, will the minister commit to finding a solution for the seniors stranded at the Dartmouth General who need long-term care and the people waiting in the emergency room?

RANDY DELOREY: As the member would know, infrastructure investments are being made for the central region. The system took a broad look at this to identify what the long-term needs of the system for infrastructure are going to be. That plan was released. It identified additional beds throughout the system. Dartmouth General, as the member noted very clearly, is receiving many upgrades and expansions to services within that facility. Other aspects are being added to other locations, the new clinic expansions and redevelopment here in metro.

This is all part of the work that we recognize needs to be done to bring the system into a modern state and provide the infrastructure for those clinicians to provide the care that all Nova Scotians require.