Nova Scotia·NewAfter more than a year of working to validate the accuracy of the province’s need-a-family-practice registry, officials at Nova Scotia Health say the work should be complete this fall, but they’re still trying to reach thousands of people to determine their primary care needs.Process that started more than a year ago is expected to be complete this fallMichael Gorman · CBC News · Posted: Sep 11, 2025 2:34 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoNova Scotia’s waitlist for a family doctor has about 84,000 people on it as of Sept. 1. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)After more than a year of working to validate the accuracy of the province’s need-a-family-practice registry, officials at Nova Scotia Health say the work should be complete this fall, but they’re still trying to reach thousands of people to determine their primary care needs.”The majority of people on the registry would have had a reach-out from Nova Scotia Health by now, but there are some that we have not yet contacted,” Bethany McCormick, a vice-president with the health authority, said in a recent interview.”In August, the number of folks that we still needed to validate was about 27,000 people and that could be because we haven’t been able to reach them or they haven’t received their call yet.”Detailed monthly updates of the registry were paused in June 2024 while officials worked to determine who on the list still needed to be there and to gather a better profile of the people on the registry to help meet their health-care needs.McCormick said that process includes trying to reach a person by phone up to three times, as well as reaching out by email and written letter.More info collected but ‘not feasible’ to releaseRather than continuing the custom of posting online a detailed monthly breakdown of need by community and updating how many names were added or removed from the registry and the reasons for the changes, the health authority has for the last year issued monthly news releases with an overall number only.A release Thursday said that as of Sept. 1, 84,069 people were on the registry, down from 87,879 the previous month. The new number represents 7.9 per cent of the provincial population. The number has steadily dropped during the validation period, from about 160,000 in June 2024.Although the information being released has been reduced, McCormick said officials still have necessary data to know the level of need in various parts of the province. But she said it’s “not feasible” to release that to the public.”We continue to use that information about change in demand, change in population size, change in providers available — all of that information we’re taking into account when we’re doing our planning,” said McCormick.”So we do have that information, but we have additional context and opportunity to validate and work with that information that wouldn’t be available to the public.”‘Trying to make that conversation go away’McCormick said it’s important not to report that information until the validation process is complete “because there’s so many contextual factors and dynamic elements to it that have to be taken into account when reviewing the information.”NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it makes sense that the registry needs to be validated, but it does not make sense that information the health authority has been collecting all along is being withheld from the public.”I talk to people in every corner of this province who tell me that they’ve waited one, two, three, five years to be attached to primary care, and they know that this isn’t a conversation that’s good for the government and so they’re trying to make that conversation go away.”Interim Liberal Leader Derek Mombourquette said Premier Tim Houston and the Progressive Conservatives made the size of the registry a central point of the 2021 election campaign that helped them form government.Health minister will review reporting recommendationsNow that the PCs are in power, Mombourquette said, they seem less interested in providing the public with as much information as possible. He doesn’t accept the explanation that the validation process makes it too difficult to provide more than high-level data about the status of the registry.”It begs the question of ‘What are you hiding?’ If people are getting family doctors, that’s fantastic. Show people the information so they can see where across Nova Scotia they’re getting access and where there are gaps.”McCormick said the validation process should be finished sometime this fall and then a recommendation will be made to Health Minister Michelle Thompson and officials in her department about how reporting could look in the future.”We’ll wait for feedback from them around exactly what the report will look like going forward,” she said.ABOUT THE AUTHORMichael Gorman covers the Nova Scotia legislature for CBC, with additional focuses on health care and rural communities. Contact him with story ideas at michael.gorman@cbc.ca
N.S. Health still trying to validate the needs of 27,000 people on family practice registry
