Nova Scotia Launches Telehealth Pilot to Connect Residents With PCPs

Nova Scotia is launching a telehealth program aimed at improving access to care for the more than 65,000 residents of the Canadian province who don’t have a primary care provider.

Nova Scotia Health this week announced the launch VirtualCareNS, a connected health platform supported by federal pandemic relief funding that connects healthcare providers in the province with residents who have signed the Need a Family Practice Registry. Some 65,526 names were on that list as of May 1, comprising about 7 percent of the province’s population.

“Virtual care has been an important way of meeting Nova Scotians’ healthcare needs safely and effectively during the pandemic,” Zach Churchill, Minister of Health and Wellness, whose department is participating in the pilot, said in a press release. “This partnership will provide many who are without a primary care provider with access to a range of health services while also helping to inform the future state of virtual care in the province.”

Lack of access to primary care services is a problem on both sides of the border – and across the globe. In many rural regions like northeastern Canada, providers are few and far between and often at, near or beyond their limit of patients. In many cases, those without a PCP will visit a community health clinic, retail health site or the local hospital for care, filling those waiting rooms with people who might not need that level of care.

Mix in the coronavirus pandemic, during which in-person care has been restricted, and access becomes all that much harder. As a result, people are forgoing care and putting themselves at risk of more serious health issues later on.

“As the pandemic has demonstrated, virtual care is a powerful tool that can help us deliver quality care to Nova Scotians,” Maria Alexiadis, MD, Nova Scotia Health’s senior medical director of primary care health and the chronic disease management network, said in the press release. “While virtual primary care is not meant to, and will not, replace the role of primary care providers in providing comprehensive in-person care, it helps us bridge the gap and provide people with the care they need.”

The program will begin in four communities with the highest percentages of residents on the list, and expand eventually throughout the province. Those who have been on the list the longest will be invited first to join.

And they’ll remain on the list, officials said, so that they can be placed with a local care provider who can provide in-person care when one is available.

The program is scheduled to run for two year and cost roughly $2 million. Providers using the platform will be reimbursed through a billing code established for virtual care during the COVID-19 crisis, and the federal government has extended that emergency through at least March 2022.

Heather Johnson, MD, a family care practitioner in Bridgewater and president-elect of Doctors Nova Scotia, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that she gets phone calls every day from residents looking for a PCP.

"That's a horrible time burden for Nova Scotians who feel like they have to call around and try and search out a family doctor," she told the news service. "The pilot program is not going to fix this, but what it's going to do is give people who don't know where to turn to have primary care a place that they can go."