Progress Updates

2025-2026 Q1 Progress Updates

• More lives will be saved from lung cancer as the Lung Screening Program expands to Cape Breton and the eastern mainland
• Construction of the new emergency department at Yarmouth Regional Hospital will provide better access to emergency healthcare for people in Yarmouth, Shelburne and Digby counties
• Youth aged 12 to 25 and those who support them now have more access to immediate mental health and social services in Cumberland County
• Cranes arrive for Halifax Infirmary Expansion Project
• Free shingles vaccine available to Nova Scotians aged 65 and older
• The Province is funding more first-year seats for Nova Scotia students in the doctor of medicine program at Dalhousie University in Halifax

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.