With each quarterly update, we provide meaningful accomplishments and significant data points from the previous quarter, highlighting examples of the constant changes being made to the health system.
2025-2026 Q3 Progress Updates
- Tender awarded for QEII Health Sciences Centre Master Planning
- Nova Scotians can now access a summary of their medical information through YourHealthNS
- Amendments to the nursing regulations under the Nursing Act created a new designation for registered psychiatric nurses
- Nova Scotia exceeds university healthcare program enrolment targets
- A new provincial technology platform will better connect the home care sector to support front-line staff and provide quality care, faster for Nova Scotians
2025-2026 Q2 Progress Updates
- Three new health homes in Halifax Regional Municipality are expected to welcome more than 20,000 people from the Need a Family Practice Registry.
- Walk-in recovery centres for substance use and gambling support are available across the province.
- Excavation for the QEII Halifax Infirmary acute care tower was completed on September 3, marking a significant milestone in improving access to care for Nova Scotians.
- Young people living in Halifax and Sydney have more access to immediate mental health and social services at two new integrated youth services sites.
- Infants under eight months and adults 75 years and older can access free protection against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
- A new health home in New Glasgow combines patient care with professional development and simulation-based learning for healthcare professionals.
2025-2026 Q1 Progress Updates
2024-2025 Q4 Progress Updates
- Registered nurses can now apply to participate in the province’s first internal travel nurse program, a pilot that will create a Nova Scotia Health travel nurse team to be deployed to emergency departments
- The QEII Halifax Infirmary expansion enters main construction phase, bringing Nova Scotians closer to a new, modern acute care tower with more beds and operating rooms and a larger emergency department
- People in Cumberland County will have improved access to emergency and dialysis healthcare closer to home with a redevelopment project at the regional hospital
- Nova Scotia opened a new centre that will see internationally trained physicians get licensed faster to practice in communities across the province
- A new pilot program is helping seniors in long-term care facilities and at home get access to more care faster, with nurses trained to prescribe medication for common ailments
- Nova Scotians with mood and anxiety disorders will have more access to mental healthcare at no cost through the province’s first mental health and addictions publicly funded insured services program
- People in need of mental health and addictions services will have more local support options with provincial funding to 23 community organizations
2024-2025 Q3 Progress Updates
- Nova Scotia is opening a new centre to help more internationally trained physicians become licensed to practice in the province more quickly
- Government providing a new retirement benefit to doctors as part of ongoing efforts to expand recruitment and retention initiatives in Nova Scotia
- People in Nova Scotia who want to pursue a career as a licensed practical nurse (LPN) in continuing care can get free tuition through a new pilot program
- The first graduates of the province’s new continuing care assistant training program joined Nova Scotia’s healthcare workforce
- More seniors in Halifax Regional Municipality can now get extra help to live independently in their own homes
2024-2025 Q2 Progress Updates
- More Nova Scotians will soon have access to a community pharmacy primary care clinic closer to home with 14 new pharmacies joining the pilot program this fall
- It will soon be easier for Nova Scotians to search for health information and faster for healthcare professionals to find important health information about their patient, thanks to a new partnership with Google Cloud.
- Patients at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax will benefit from faster, more precise diagnostic imaging with the opening of a state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) suite.
- Nova Scotians can access their health information anywhere, any time through the YourHealthNS app after the province expanded electronic health records access provincewide.
- More Nova Scotians will receive dialysis treatment closer to home with three new dialysis units coming to the communities of Springhill, Shelburne and Evanston, Richmond County.
- A new clinical psychology residency program – a first for Dalhousie University – is set to begin in the fall of 2025, funded by the Office of Addictions and Mental Health.
2024-2025 Q1 Progress Updates
- Nova Scotia’s second medical school campus is on track to open in the fall of 2025 with 30 seats for first-year medical students, with a focus on practising in rural Nova Scotian communities
- Nova Scotians being treated for cancer and dealing with hair loss can now get help with the cost of a wig through a one-time rebate of $300
- four new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and a partnership with a medical imaging company will improve access and reduce wait times for patients
- eligible Nova Scotians living with diabetes can now apply for funding to cover the cost of sensor-based glucose monitoring supplies
- residents of Pugwash and the surrounding area will have better access to healthcare with the opening of the new North Cumberland Health Care Centre
- cancer patients and others in Cape Breton will receive enhanced care closer to home with the announcement of a new PET-CT scanner for the Cape Breton Regional Hospital
- Nova Scotia will cover full tuition costs for more than 460 people who want to become a primary care paramedic or emergency medical responder
2023-2024 Q4 Action Updates:
- A new screening program will help save lives by preventing lung cancer and finding it earlier
- Thousands of patients at several clinics across the province have access to their medical records through the YourHealthNS app in a new pilot project
- Nova Scotians in Yarmouth, Shelburne and Digby counties will have better access to emergency healthcare with the expansion of the Yarmouth Regional Hospital emergency department
- More Nova Scotians living with diabetes will soon be able to better afford the equipment and supplies they need
- An innovative healthcare project will build up the transitional care centre in West Bedford and bring much-needed beds into the healthcare system faster
- Generations of Nova Scotians will have better access to healthcare as the largest healthcare construction project in Nova Scotia’s history gets underway
- More than 30 organizations received funding to support community healthcare recruitment and retention initiatives
2023-2024 Q3 Action Updates:
- The new Bayers Lake Community Outpatient Centre is providing a wide range of services and helping reduce pressure on other facilities
- Healthcare services, resources, and information are now a tap away with the new YourHealthNS mobile app that connects Nova Scotians with care
- More patients are seeing better communication around referrals with the addition of MRI and ultrasound tests to the e-referral system
- A new, larger collaborative family practice clinic opened in Eastern Passage
- More seniors will get needed long-term care with hundreds of additional new and replacement rooms across the province
- More people in Digby County now have access to primary healthcare with the addition of nine new healthcare professionals to the Digby Collaborative Family Practice team
2023-2024 Q2 Action Updates:
- Doctors Nova Scotia and the Province successfully negotiated new, four-year physician and clinical academic funding agreements
- A new comprehensive Gender-Affirming Care Policy took effect in July to ensure transgender and gender-diverse Nova Scotians will receive more supportive healthcare
- A new EHS LifeFlight airplane began transporting non-critical care patients from Yarmouth and Sydney to Halifax for tests and treatment
- Lunenburg was announced as the first site for healthcare worker housing
- Expanded the International Graduates in Demand stream of the Provincial Nominee Program to include paramedics and pharmacy technicians
- Expanded the Centre for Rural Aging on Health (CORAH) to provide new hubs to connect seniors with social and recreational programming
2023-2024 Q1 Action Updates:
- Reduced the surgical wait list, completed more surgeries and procedures.
- The number of doctors in Nova Scotia continues to grow; 168 doctors started practising here between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, a net gain of 86 physicians.
- Added more nursing seats at Nova Scotia Community College and with a new nursing program at Acadia University, in partnership with Cape Breton University.
- Investing in 60 new and strengthened clinics that will connect more Nova Scotians to primary care.
- Launched a new incentive for family doctors with an office-based practice to match patients with greatest need with a family doctor sooner.
- The Care Coordination Centre at the Halifax Infirmary site of the QEII Health Sciences Centre gives healthcare teams real-time information to help them provide better, faster care to patients.
2022-2023 Q4 Action Updates:
- Launched plan to improve emergency care to ensure people with the most urgent needs get care first.
- New pharmacy primary care clinics now in 26 communities, offering appointments with the pharmacist for patients with common illnesses and people who are on medications for some chronic diseases.
- Announced retention bonuses and incentives for 55,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in Nova Scotia’s publicly funded healthcare system.
- Passed the Patient Access to Care Act, a law that helps healthcare providers more easily come to NS, use all of their skills to help their patients, and spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.
- Invested $58.9 million to educate, recruit, and retain more doctors at Nova Scotia’s second medical school campus at Cape Breton University, in collaboration with Dalhousie University.
2022-2023 Q3 Action Updates:
- The mobile primary healthcare clinic travels to communities across the province, providing care to an average of 75-100 people per weekend.
- New $2-million Office of Healthcare Professionals Recruitment Fund offers up to $100,000 to community groups and municipalities for projects to help recruit and retain healthcare professionals.
- Advanced heart-care service announced for Cape Breton Regional Hospital, eliminating the need to travel to Halifax for many life-saving procedures.
- Six doctors now serve as MD recruitment leads, participating in visits and meeting with potential recruits to the province.
- Created a new designated pathway to residency for 10 international medical graduates with ties to Nova Scotia who want to practice here.
2022-2023 Q2 Action Updates:
- Added 200 new nursing seats at post-secondary institutions across the province.
- Launched new initiative with Dalhousie family medicine clinics and Nova Scotia Health to connect hundreds of people to primary care providers and help new doctors establish practices.
- Emergency Health Services hiring 100 more non-paramedic drivers to handle routine patient transfers, allowing paramedics to focus on emergency calls; since September 2021, non-urgent patient transfers by paramedics have been reduced from 86% to 25%.
- Expanded VirtualCareNS to all Nova Scotians on the Need a Family Practice Registry.
- Work underway on more than a dozen actions to reduce the unnecessary administrative burden for doctors to give them more time to do what they do best - take care of patients.
Public Reporting
Interactive data dashboards, updated daily, provide information on the health services Nova Scotians use. Many different sources of data from across the health system have gone into the creation of these dashboards.