This is the third instalment in a Global News series called Code Critical, which examines the issues impacting the health-care system in Nova Scotia. Read Part 1: How a N.S. woman without a family doctor prays her family ‘doesn’t get sick’ and Part 2: Family doctors, walk-in clinics and how stretched the N.S. system is.
In a province where more than 156,000 people are on the waitlist for a family doctor, Melissa Ellsworth counts herself lucky she has one.
The problem is, she now lives more than 400 km away in Cape Breton, while her doctor of 20 years is in Halifax.
“I have to keep my family doctor in Halifax, there’s no doctors here,” Ellsworth said from her home in Dominion, N.S.
When she moved to Cape Breton two years ago — where her extended family lives — she was worried about not being able to find a doctor on the island. She decided to keep her doctor in Halifax to ensure she would have a health-care provider.
As a patient with complex needs, she’s hesitant to register for the doctor waitlist to see if there’s a provider closer to home.
“I did think about it but then I had an appointment with a doctor, and the doctor said, ‘Forget about trying to get a doctor here. Because of the complexity of your situation they probably won’t take you on,’” she said.
Ellsworth herself is a former nurse, and was injured on the job in 2006. It left her with chronic pain, in addition to a condition that makes her immunocompromised.
For Ellsworth, having a consistent doctor and that continuity of care is vital because she’s concerned others simply won’t understand her situation.
“There are days that my pain levels are so high, I can barely think,” she explained.
“So if they’re not familiar with me — like I know for a fact that if I walked into an emergency or a walk-in clinic in a flare-up, they’re just going to think, ‘drug seeker.’ Yeah, that’s just what’s going to happen.”
Furthermore, as someone who is immunocompromised, she said it’s not appropriate for her to “go sit 12 hours in an emergency room.”
So, she continues to rely on either phone appointments with her doctor, or she’ll make the five-hour trek to Halifax whenever she needs medical care. Ellsworth doesn’t drive, so she relies on a shuttle or hitching a ride with family or friends.
Incentive for doctors
In a sit-down interview with Global News as part of the Code Critical series, Nova Scotia Health Minister Michelle Thompson said a person in Ellsworth’s position could indeed “consider” going on the Need a Family Practice Registry to wait it out for a new doctor closer to their home.
In addition, the minister pointed out that Nova Scotians can update their health information on that registry if they have complex needs.
Doing so may make it more likely they’ll get a doctor.
“We had an incentive for physicians in the spring that if they would take 50 patients off the Need a Family Practice Registry, they would have an incentive of $10,000. We saw 65 physicians sign up for that,” she said.
The change, announced in June 2023, prioritized moving people with the most pressing medical needs off the list. After the initial $10,000 for taking 50 of the sickest patients from the waitlist, doctors will receive an additional $200 for every extra patient they accept.
Katrina Philopoulos, the director of physician recruitment with Nova Scotia Health, told Global News that the province is “recruiting as aggressively as possible” and “not leaving any stone unturned.”
But for Ellsworth, it’s not enough.
She intends to keep her arrangement, and continue commuting to Halifax.
“There’s no doctors here. And I’ve never seen such a state. As a former health-care worker myself, I’ve never seen it as bad,” she said.