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| Communications Nova Scotia |
On September 1, 2021, the provincial government announced that Karen Oldfield was appointed "Interim CEO" of the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA). Oldfield, an unemployed lawyer and PC party faithful with zero experience in health care, replaced physician CEO Brendan Carr and a 14-person volunteer board of directors. The outgoing CEO and any of the board members were, by nearly any measure, more qualified for the position of CEO of NSHA than Oldfield.
In an interview with the CBC, Oldfield stated that "while she may not have a health-care background, she came into her job with the experience of caring for a husband who requires regular trips to the hospital for dialysis and other treatments." Respectfully, saying you're qualified to run the provincial healthcare system because you've helped someone else use it is like saying you know how to run a restaurant because you've taken your kids to Wendy's a bunch of times.
Tim Houston's PC government was elected on the promise of fixing healthcare. Nearly a year and a half into Houston's government, healthcare is worse than it has ever been. Nearly 13 per cent of Nova Scotians don't have a family doctor. Nova Scotians are dying waiting for ambulances that don't come and they're dying in emergency rooms waiting for care.
All the while the government takes victory laps for a virtual care program that can service minor health complaints at a maximum rate of 1,000 appointments per week for the 129,000 Nova Scotians without doctors. A number that has nearly doubled since Houston's government took office. Additional laps are given for mobile health clinics that service two communities a week in Nova Scotia that can also only service minor health complaints and the eight physician assistants, three of whom evidently already worked here and a bunch of hospital improvements that were started under the last government and largely paid for by rich donors.
When Houston's government was elected, the vast majority of people in all of HRM, West Hants and Eastern Shore/Musquodoboit had doctors. Now these areas make up nearly half of the physician wait list. The Memorial Hospital on the Eastern Shore has no emergency room for the entire month of January. The Houston government eliminated the cash incentive for physicians relocating to these areas in some misguided effort to recruit doctors to more rural areas. I kindly say misguided, because thinking a physician will consider relocation rural Nova Scotia, because Halifax isn't eligible for a subsidy is stupid. There are definite merits to both urban and rural life. For a physician who wants an urban life and has massive debt to pay, they'll pick another province or another country where they can live in the environment they want. To be clear, it's us that's over a barrel, not them. To treat physicians like it's the other way around is a very unserious take from a government that only pretends to be serious.
In 2020, opposition leader Tim Houston demanded an inquiry into the 52 Covid-19 deaths in Northwood that occurred in the first month of the pandemic under the leadership of the previous Liberal government. Premier Tim Houston's government has witnessed a Northwood's worth of Covid-19 deaths every month for over a year now, more than 600 dead. Houston's unserious response to Covid-19 since April 2021 is to "get back out there!"
It's an unserious act to all healthcare professionals, including any we're trying to recruit, to fire a highly qualified CEO and competency-based board of directors and replace them with an individual with no experience and without competition. Oldfield, just like the two "personal friends" Houston appointed to head two crown agencies at $1,500 a day, is a very unserious appointment.
It's a very unserious government that demands more money from the feds while insisting strings aren't necessary. Strings that are absolutely needed by this government that won't even answer to its own legislature about how it spends our money. That won't say how much hospital improvements will cost. That released a healthcare plan without timelines or targets. That appointed an unqualified "interim" CEO who is still in the position over a year later. An interim CEO under whom the quality of care in Nova Scotia has tanked all the while pledging that she'd swear on a bible that everything that has broken since she took over will be magically fixed by 2025, just when her boss needs our votes to stay in power.
