Tories, NDP target Liberals’ health care record

The Tories and NDP made their pitches Wednesday to Nova Scotians weary of healthcare irritants, promising to address doctor shortages and emergency room overcrowding.

Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie announced $13.5 million over four years to recruit more doctors, which he said would significantly reduce shortages in a province where as many as 100,000 people have no family doctor.

“We need more doctors now: Family doctors to get people to the front of the line and advocate for them in our system, and more specialists like surgeons to see that they get the surgeries that they need in a timely way,” he said.

NDP Leader Gary Burrill, meanwhile, promised to address what he called “hallway medicine,” and put an end to emergency department overcrowding if his party is elected May 30.

“Patients are being left waiting in hallways, being double bunked in single rooms, made to wait hours in the E.R. or arrive at the hospital to find their E.R. closed,” said Burrill.

As he unveiled a new program for pre-schoolers, Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil said one of the health-care-system pressures has been that his government inherited Halifax facilities that were in poor condition.

“Part of the issue when we came into government was the actual state of some of our infrastructure here in Halifax which had been left without the kind of attention it required,” he said.

“We’ve been working very hard that we provide the services in the right health care environment and that when our health care workers go to work they have the proper supports in the proper environment.”

Baillie also pledged to double the tuition relief program to $6 million to keep new family doctors in the province and said the plan would also recognize credentials for Canadians who study medicine abroad.

Last month Doctors Nova Scotia said the province would need to recruit 100 doctors a year for the next decade to deal with an aging population.