NSHA has some useful information amid the numbers

Province is currently short about 60 family physicians, but has 11 new recruits lined up to start in family practice soon

We aren’t where we need to be, but we’re in a better place than we were.

That was the most cogent assessment of the province’s family doctor situation offered by health bureaucrats during a two-hour meeting with the Nova Scotia legislature’s public accounts committee Wednesday.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority’s (NSHA) new doctor recruitment strategy, labelled “More Than Medicine” will try to lure new doctors to the province by featuring its many attributes.

The province’s version of “More Than Medicine” will compete for space with central African ear, nose and throat specialists; a pharmacy in Oklahoma; Aussie cardiologists; a collaborative care coalition in the United Kingdom; and a book by that name, subtitled A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement, and that’s just the top five hits Google spits out in reply to a search of the three-word phrase.

The public accounts committee spent most of its time circling a plethora of numbers that all led to the same place. Nova Scotia needs more doctors and the NSHA has the unenviable task of finding them.

It was the authority’s senior medical director, Rick Gibson, who succeeded where others have failed, when he explained why the province is better positioned now to anticipate the demand for doctors than it was in the past.

Dr. Gibson pointed out that five years ago, when he was head of family practice in the capital district, there was no reliable mechanism to determine much of anything about family doctors.

The NSHA now has a complete inventory, knows where they are and has additional information, including doctors’ ages, which helps predict things like retirement and plan future physician requirements.

In the past, it was left to private practitioners to determine whether there was a succession plan to meet their patients’ needs.

While this may seem like a modest achievement, it is a watershed moment in the evolution of the NSHA. Someone finally articulated a tangible benefit for patients as a direct result of restructuring the administration of the province’s health system.

Up to this point, the government has said it amalgamated nine district authorities into one to eliminate overhead. Improvements in the quality of health care, if any, were nebulous.

It is a matter of perspective whether amalgamation was coincidental with, or a disruption that caused or contributed to an eruption of problems in the province’s medical environment.

Beyond assurances that improvements were on the way, sloganeering about the right provider at the right place, and an acknowledgement that there will be resistance to change there hasn’t been much said by the government or anyone else to recommend the NSHA.

Nor has the authority helped its own cause. That could be the growing pains of a new organization, but some ham-handed attempts at public relations and a mysteriously elusive board haven’t elevated the outfit’s reputation, either.

The array of numbers bandied about to quantify the family doctor shortage, included Statistics Canada’s report of 100,000 Nova Scotians without one. Many of those folks may not be looking, given the StatsCan survey asks: “Do you have a family doctor?”

The NSHA has a list of 42,000 Nova Scotians who are looking for a doc, and it believes the province is currently short about 60 family physicians, but has 11 new recruits lined up to start in family practice soon.

Quebec, Ontario, Newfoundland and, repeatedly, the U.K. were mentioned as good places to family-doctor-hunt. “More Than Medicine” may cause some minor confusion with the U.K. coalition using the same tagline, but the NSHA should have no difficulty differentiating itself from an Okie druggist, the Kenyans, and the Canberra group.

There was an interlude in the meeting when committee members split along partisan lines over whether Nova Scotia is a “happy place” for doctors, with Pictou East Tory MLA Tim Houston asserting it is not, Clare-Digby Liberal MLA Gordon Wilson maintaining that it is, and New Democrats wisely avoiding the question.

Denise Perret, Nova Scotia’s deputy health minister, also sidestepped the happy place to land carefully on a description of the province’s medical community as passionate, energetic and caring.

The unassuming Dr. Gibson wouldn’t have realized he was catapulting the authority out of an abyss of ambiguity into the glow of purpose, but his simple illustration of one area of improved management should be remembered, although it won’t reach the heights “More Than Medicine” has achieved.

Maybe that’s why the NSHA is the latest to lift it.

“Do you have a family doctor?”