Green Party Announces Plan to Solve Primary Healthcare Crisis

October 18, 2024

HAMPTON — Today Green Party Leader David Coon outlined how a Green government will make investments and systemic policy changes to overcome the barriers to creating collaborative team-based family practices and clinics around the province.

“Liberal and Conservative governments have been telling us they are committed to transitioning from solo family practices to family practice teams and collaborative care clinics since 2003,” said David Coon. “We’re hearing it again in this election from Higgs and Holt, but just as was the case when their parties were the government, neither are willing to commit the necessary funds to create them. They won’t materialize out of thin air without funding them.”

Coon pointed to four doctors in Hampton where four local doctors want to join together to create a team-based collaborative care clinic, but are unable to hire a nurse practitioner, a nurse manager or any other allied health professional without a funding model to do so.

The primary barrier to collaborative care clinics is a lack of a funding model to include nurse practitioners and other allied health professionals as part of the healthcare teams in these clinics. 

“It’s only the Greens who have committed to put a funding model in place so that the members of a collaborative care team can be paid through the Department of Health, just as physicians are,” said Coon. “With the funding in place we would enable doctors or nurse practitioners to establish the collaborative care teams we badly need to end the waiting lists for a health care home.

“While the other parties continue to talk, we actually invest the money needed to make the transition from solo family practices to collaborative team based practices and clinics, concluded Coon.“

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