Senior health officials warn N.S. spending 'is not sustainable'
CBC
Senior members of the Nova Scotia Health leadership team have delivered a blunt warning to MLAs about the rate of spending, saying a new approach is needed for infrastructure projects.
“The same way of doing it across the province is not sustainable and won’t happen. It’s just not in the cards,” NSH chief financial officer Derek Spinney told members of the legislature's public accounts committee on Wednesday.
Interim CEO Karen Oldfield said provinces across the country and governments beyond Canada are contending with construction prices that keep going up amidst a variety of demands.
“Our system just can’t do it,” Oldfield told the committee.
“We can’t do it fast enough and don’t have the money when we have every other issue that’s going on in the world and in our province to keep spending uncontrollably on health care.”
The comments from Oldfield and Spinney come a week after Premier Tim Houston said the province is on track for a record budget deficit of $1.4 billion or more. Additionally, an auditor general report showed health-care operating expenses in the province increased from $5.2 billion in 2020-21 to $7.7 billion in 2024-25.
When capital assets are factored in, the province racked up nearly $9 billion in health-related spending for 2024-25.
Three years ago Houston unveiled an ambitious redevelopment and expansion plan for health-care sites. Anchored by the first phase of the long-gestating redevelopment of the Halifax Infirmary, a project with a $7.4-billion price tag, that plan also looked at the expansion of other existing sites and the development of new ones.
On Wednesday, Oldfield said she’s not suggesting the province is done with building — but after a period of heavy investment in bricks and mortar and data collection and technology, it’s time to use those efforts to assess how services could be delivered in new ways that ensure people get the care they need.
As an example, Spinney pointed to the transitional care unit that opened a year ago in West Bedford. The site hosts patients who are awaiting a nursing home placement or are not yet ready to go home but no longer require an acute care bed.
Having those people stay somewhere other than a hospital means they’re getting more appropriate care for a lower cost, said Spinney. It’s something he told MLAs he expects to see more of.
“So you’ll see less of the big hospitals with the H on it and more of the facilities like this and more care actually being delivered in home.”
Last year the government awarded a contract for master planning related to the buildings that make up the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. That work, which is to be complete in 2027, could lead to new facilities, but Oldfield said the gains the system is making thanks to investments in data collection and technology should mean the “automatic response is not, ‘Oh, well we need to build another bed.’
“But we can use it to make sure that the patient gets the proper care in the right place.”
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