Future of health care on the menu at Halifax luncheon

Nova Scotia’s health-care issues were discussed at a Halifax luncheon on Thursday.

Two prominent figures in Nova Scotia health care addressed a business crowd on Thursday at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Halifax.

“We need to have a healthy community to have a productive community. Our members are telling us loud and clear that health care is very important to make sure that the conditions for success are there for a thriving economy,” says Don Bureaux, president and CEO of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.

One main topic of discussion was the newly implemented, One Patient One Record (OPOR) system, which was introduced first at the IWK Hospital and has since been expanded to all hospitals in the central zone.

The $365 million initiative merges more than 50 health systems into one.

“I’m actually hearing really good things,” the province’s health minister says of the early stages of the rollout.

Minister Michelle Thompson also touted the province’s recruiting record of a net gain of 570 physicians over the last five years.

“We’ve certainly seen good recruitment with nurses as well. Certainly, heard folks talk about paramedic recruitment, the pharmacy work that’s happening and also our ability to train people who are within Nova Scotia,” she says.

Those incoming professionals could be facing a new style of health care.

“It’s not going to be about bricks and mortar, we may want it to be, but it’s impossible, the money is not going to exist,” says the interim president and CEO of Nova Scotia Health, Karen Oldfield.

“All of this modernization and digitization of health care will allow us to advance new initiatives, some that we probably don’t even know about yet. So, I think that all the bricks and mortar delivery of care, going to a provider all the time instead of having the opportunity to see someone virtually, those things are changing,” adds Thompson.

All of it to keep up with the growing demands of a growing province where innovation will be at the forefront of the health care system.

One bricks and mortar facility that is being built is the $7.4 billion QEII Hospital.

Thompson says it is on budget and on time to open in the fall of 2031.

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