PORT HAWKESBURY: The Business of Health panel during last week’s ‘State of the Strait’ focused on the impact of pressures on our health care system, particularly related to facilities and recruitment of health care professionals.
Initial results of the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2020 member survey show that physician recruitment is as high a priority for businesses as the long-standing No. 1 issue, the attraction and retention of employees.
Michael Hatt, owner of the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Port Hawkesbury, discussed the transformative improvements to the Gateway Plaza health care facilities, describing it as something you would see in a city-centre but brought to a more rural setting.
Formerly home to Dooly’s, it is now the location of the town’s newest primary health and collaborative health clinic, which will include Hatt’s Medicine Shoppe, a public health office, branches of mental health and addiction services, and a physician’s office with a nurse practitioner.
Hatt indicated the current physician and nurse practitioner will be relocated to a new section of the building, and announced another nurse practitioner has been hired for the building “that will start by the end of the year.”
“Also, they’ll have different aspects of different health care providers that will be working out of that section,” he said. “I know there will be an RN, there will be a social worker, a dietician – they really hope to mix in the different health care professionals to be able to offer that full service.”
The other section of the building, Hatt explained, will house mental health and addiction services along with public health.
“They’re expanding to be quite large, which is great,” he said. “Mental health is definitely an aspect of health care in Nova Scotia that needs an injection of people.”
The building will no longer be in the shape of an ‘L’ as construction plans will knock down the former Rose Garden and the current physician’s office. The physicians, public health, along with mental health and addictions are slated to move into the building by the end of April.
The offices inside are state-of-the-art and Hatt suggested we’re going to be very proud to have something like this here in Port Hawkesbury.
He expressed this revitalization project wouldn’t have taken place had it not been for the Destination Reeves Street plan.
Expanding on his personal business, Hatt expressed when he first opened 10 years ago, his franchise model was you could survive at 60 prescriptions a day and live quite comfortably.
“We’ve had a lot of regulations, provincially and federally that have drastically reduced our funding and now you couldn’t survive at 60,” he said. “Luckily, we’ve experienced 35 per cent growth in the last year, which means our pharmacy wasn’t designed to handle that kind of number so we had to make some space to improve our efficiency.”
Hatt went from a staff consisting of one full-time and two part-time employees, to five full-time and one part-time – and are now able to add a consultation room and a new counselling room.
Since January 2020, the province has opened up prescribing services for pharmacists and four main services are now being added to their prescribable list, mainly due to accessibility; hormonal birth control, shingles, urinary tract infection, and renewals.
“Right now I can only renew a prescription for 30-days, if it’s something you’re on long-term,” he said. “As of April 1, we’re no longer able to provide that service of providing 30-days. In a long-term prescription I can now renew up to a six month supply.”
Hopefully, Hatt suggested they’ll be able to recruit an additional physician for the building and lauded one of his fellow panelists for his assistance.
Dr. Trevor Boudreau spoke about the new Cape Breton South Recruiting for Health group that’s stepped up to take recruitment to a whole new level and is encouraging businesses to engage.
The group, which encompasses Richmond County and the Town of Port Hawkesbury, was formed on January 23, 2020 at the Strait-Richmond Hospital, after the Dr. Kingston Memorial Community Health Centre requested a meeting of people from the community to talk about the challenges they’re facing in health care in the region.
Boudreau, who is also a town councillor in Port Hawkesbury, explained representation rose from the Strait-Richmond Hospital, St. Anne’s Centre, the County of Richmond, the Town of Port Hawkesbury, the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce, and assisting on the immigration side of things, the Cape Breton Partnership.
“There are concerns with health care throughout the province, especially in our region,” he said. “ER closures occur almost every other day, maybe daily now because this is not just happening here but also in Victoria County [and] Guysborough County.”
Questioning where these closures are coming from, Boudreau explained in the case of the Strait-Richmond Hospital, every Wednesday and every other weekend they do not have a physician available so that means the ER is closed. He also noted St. Anne Centre struggles with registered nurses, as well as with some disruptive physician coverage.
“Anybody who has spent time visiting a nursing home, or have family members that have home care, can understand the shortages that are facing our communities,” he said. “Our nursing homes are understaffed, and the staff that are there are working overtime and working long hours to provide the services that are needed for our most vulnerable.”
Boudreau also suggested if you look at home care, our family members are not getting the care they need or deserve, simply “because we don’t have availability.”
Currently, the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) is advertising two physician positions in the Town of Port Hawkesbury, two physicians at Kingston Memorial Clinic in L’Ardoise, and one physician in the ER at the Strait-Richmond Hospital.
“We have upwards of five current physicians who have been practicing in our community for many years, looking at retirement or leaving us within the next three-to-five-years,” he explained. “That leaves approximately three positions in Richmond County and Port Hawkesbury to take care of what it is we need to take care of.”
Boudreau said when he was recruiting physicians in Halifax he realized “you don’t know what you don’t know until you get there,” and some of those experiences he witnessed at the conference are really driving them in what they need to do to better themselves and take control of their own destiny.
“The health authority, when they go recruiting to these events, they go recruiting for the whole province, so these five positions that aren’t on top of the list necessarily may get passed over,” he said. “I think it’s our responsibility to identify the needs for our community, we need to look at advocating for our smaller health centres, because they are crucial to the success of our regional hospitals.”
Boudreau touched on how the province is struggling to attract physicians as there has been a “real barrier” created because of the negativity portrayed by the media as the good-side of the stories of how great it is to work in a small community and how great it is to be part of something where you’re supporting your community are not being told.
Another issue that has put limitations on physician recruitment, he explained, has been the regulatory requirements and how difficult it is for practitioners from other provinces to come here.
“They can fill a prescription from a doctor in B.C.,” Boudreau said. “But that doctor in B.C. is going to struggle to have a licence here in Nova Scotia.”
His answer is easy – they need to build relationships, they need to grow the positive environment, and they need to make sure any potential physician’s family-needs are met.
“Our big priority and short-term priority has to do with recruitment,” Boudreau suggested. “Preparing for upcoming site-visits, the group has begun to look at attending recruitment conferences ourselves and are now getting into marketing and creating branding that promotes our area.”
With the first site visit occurring two-weeks-ago, six physicians visited the area as part of the practice-ready assessment program, with a collaborative approach to the tour, it was tailored specifically to those visiting.
“What’s the role for the business community?” Boudreau questioned the Strait region’s business and community leaders. “It’s supporting the site visits, about giving that positive vibe, supporting our retention efforts, and participating and giving us ideas on what we can do.”