Virtual care a 'stopgap' but Nova Scotians need long-term primary care plan — MLA
“The province’s virtual care program is a stopgap measure but Nova Scotians deserve a long-term primary health-care plan, MLA Claudia Chender says.
“We certainly hope that VirtualCareNS is an interim program and that everyone will be attached to primary care,” the New Democratic Party representative for Dartmouth South told a meeting of the legislature’s public accounts committee Wednesday.
Chender pointed to the Progressive Conservative government’s September decision to fire the entire board of the Nova Scotia Health Authority and replace them with a leadership council of four people that “is not transparent, not accessible,” making it difficult for opposition MLAs and Nova Scotians to understand what is happening with the health file.
VirtualCareNS may sound like a success on an interim basis but Chender wants to know the long-term vision for primary health care in the province.
“Can anyone else tell us what the plan is longer term to actually get people attached (to primary care providers) and what that looks like and how it’s been developed.”
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Chender said virtual care is necessary but not in any way sufficient.
“The stopgap (virtual care) is kind of working, the idea that people like it, well that’s good but what’s the alternative – no doctor, no primary care. Of course people like it … they want to be able to talk to someone who can help them with their health care.
“For the tens of thousands of residents across HRM and across the province who don’t have a physician, we are really eager to hear that plan.”
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