Nova Scotia auditor general flags transparency problems in health-care reporting

The Nova Scotia auditor general says public reporting on the provincial health system needs improvement.

HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government says it disagrees with parts of an auditor general report calling on the province to be more transparent with the performance of the health-care system.

In a report delivered Tuesday, auditor general Kim Adair said taxpayers can’t properly determine whether major investments are paying off if they don’t have the proper data.

Her report examined the province’s $1.3-billion health-care strategy, announced in 2022, which had promised regular updates on topics such as access to primary and long-term care, the number of doctors and nurses in the province, and emergency department wait times.

“Taxpayers deserve to know what their billion-plus (dollar) investment under (the health strategy) is achieving,” Adair told a news conference.

Her report included a response from the Health Department, which said it agreed with nine of her 12 recommendations. But the government said it didn’t accept Adair’s call to improve transparency on the primary care wait-list, or to report on the number of patients who leave the emergency departments without being seen. As well, the government disagreed with her recommendation to provide a regional breakdown of health system performance.

Adair told reporters the lack of regional breakdowns “might mask what’s happening in a health zone. So it’s just improved transparency. It’s unfortunate that they have disagreed with that recommendation.”

For its part, the Health Department said health zones are not consistent reporting structures and are not suitable for all measures.

As for the number of patients who leave ERs without being seen, the province said the actual number can be misleading. “Some patients may receive care virtually after visiting the emergency room or are triaged and redirected elsewhere,” the Health Department said.

Finally, the Health Department doesn’t think it needs to increase transparency in primary care wait-lists. Adair called on the government to report on the number of patients on the list who had been assigned a doctor but who hadn’t been able to book a first appointment.

Those patient categories, the government said, “are now largely administrative designations to support navigating Nova Scotians to primary health-care services.”

When asked about the department’s reasons for disagreeing to three recommendations, Adair said, “I didn’t find any of them overly persuasive as to their justification for not doing it.”

In a written response to The Canadian Press, the Health Department said it appreciated the auditor general’s report, but “there are a few points we disagree with.”

“The department … provided detailed explanations where there was disagreement. Unfortunately, the office of the auditor general did not agree or accept those explanations, nor feel they were significant enough to add more context in their report or change their recommendations.”

Among the nine recommendations the province agreed to were to identify and correct incomplete emergency department data; correct errors in physician departure data; implement data quality control expectations; and set targets to coincide with planned health-care investments and report them publicly.

Opposition NDP health critic Rod Wilson, a physician, said Tuesday that Adair’s report confirms what he’s hearing from constituents: “The story the government is telling doesn’t match their experience trying to get health care.”

Liberal member Iain Rankin said the report makes it clear that the doctor wait-list does not tell the full story, “creating a misleading picture of progress.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2026.

By Lyndsay Armstrong