Brunswick

Health Care

March 9, 2024admin

New Brunswick officials paid nursing firm for meal allowances workers never received

The Campbellton Regional Hospital in northern New Brunswick.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail

New Brunswick officials paid for the meal allowances of nurses and orderlies deployed to the province by private staffing agency Canadian Health Labs, but that money was never passed on to the company’s workers, according to nine sources, as well as documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

A Globe investigation into the skyrocketing costs of private travel nursing published in February found that CHL invoiced health authorities in Newfoundland and Labrador $1.6-million in meal allowances for the nurses it dispatched to that province, but told workers they were required to pay for their own food. Newfoundland’s province’s Liberal government has asked its comptroller-general to probe those billings.

The Globe has confirmed that the same billing discrepancy took place in New Brunswick, a province that leaned more heavily on CHL than Newfoundland. The province’s Vitalité Health Network, which delivers French-language medical services, paid CHL for meal allowances for its travelling staff, but the company’s workers were told they were on their own when it came to paying for meals, documents and interviews show.

Unlike Newfoundland, The Globe has been unable to determine the total cost of the meals billed to Vitalité by CHL. The company’s current nursing deal with Vitalité runs to 2026 and is worth a maximum of $93-million.

Toronto-based CHL entered the travel nursing business during the pandemic and quickly carved out a niche relocating health care workers to Atlantic Canada so they could take on jobs at understaffed health facilities.

As part of its contracts with Vitalité, CHL charged taxpayers $46 a day for meal allowances for each out-of-province nurse or personal support worker, the health authority confirmed to The Globe.

But nine nurses CHL assigned to Vitalité told

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Health Information

February 13, 2024admin

New Brunswick man says he waited weeks for medical information about his rare disease

A New Brunswick man, who says he wasn’t told about warning signs of his rare condition until six weeks after a doctor noted them, believes he fell through the cracks in the province’s overwhelmed health-care system.

“I had to trust the medical system, which we all trust,” said Jean-Claude Belliveau of Memramcook.

Belliveau sometimes gets foot ulcers, which are sores on his feet linked to his Type 2 diabetes.

In November 2023, a nurse doing a routine check-up of his feet told him he had an infection.

He was admitted to the Dr. Georges-L. Dumont Hospital’s trauma department in Moncton, and had to have a toe amputated due to a flesh-eating bacteria infection.

Shortly before Christmas, he says his family doctor told him his foot had another infection, and urged him to go back to the same hospital.

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His foot was X-rayed and he wasn’t given any news after his discharge.

Belliveau attended various follow-up appointments through January, and had another X-ray in late January.

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On Feb. 1, he said a doctor called him with the results of that X-ray and told him he had a rare condition called Charcot foot.

Charcot foot is a rare complication of diabetes that can cause weakening of the bones.

“My bones are shattering, meaning they’re just shattering,” said Belliveau.

“That’s why I’m wearing a cast, because they have to immobilize my foot. So I have absolutely no movement.”

He says he was told it was imperative not to put any pressure on his foot or he could need to amputate everything below his knee.

After hearing the diagnosis, Belliveau decided to look up his own medical records on MyHealthNB to see the results of the December 2023

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Health Information

February 11, 2024admin

‘Critical’ public health info slow to reach New Brunswick parents

FREDERICTON, N.B. — By John Chilibeck

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Daily Gleaner

New Brunswick’s acting chief medical health officer was so concerned with the rise of respiratory viruses earlier this month he held a news conference — the first he’d hosted in months.

At the Jan. 9 presser, Dr. Yves Léger stressed the importance of flu and COVID vaccinations and to follow safe hygiene practices given the rise of RSV and Strep-A infections.

That week alone, five people in the province died from influenza and COVID, and six preschool children needed hospital treatment for the viruses, according to the province.

In the period just before that, between Dec. 10 and 30, a total of 26 New Brunswickers died from respiratory viruses, including a child under five.

And yet, a Jan. 12 letter Léger addressed to families of school communities talking about the steps people could take to safeguard themselves and others didn’t immediately go out to all schools.

The provincial government sent the letter to the school districts, which were responsible for distributing them. Some schools didn’t send them to parents right away.

École Sainte-Anne in Fredericton, for instance, sent the letter to parents Jan. 18 – six days after Léger had issued it. The school is part of Francophone South School District.

Likewise, Anglophone South School District reported that four of its schools sent the notice out late, while Anglophone North School District told Brunswick News it inadvertently sent the notice out to all its parents on Jan. 18, due to a technical problem.

Brunswick News asked the Health Department last week why the notice did not go to all parents promptly and at the same time, given it was based on the advice of the chief medical health officer, who has a duty to

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Department Health

January 15, 2024admin

N.B. health authority says it’s working to improve strained emergency departments – New Brunswick

The interim president and CEO of New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network says they are working on improvements as emergency department wait times and hospital capacity remain at critical levels.

Margaret Melanson told reporters Friday that staff at Horizon’s four regional hospitals are “extremely busy.” The average occupancy rate for their hospitals is 106 per cent, above the national benchmark of 85 per cent.

“When our hospital occupancy levels are above 100 per cent, there is a direct impact on the wait times within our emergency departments,” Melanson said, explaining that patients who need acute care services need to wait in the emergency department until an inpatient bed is available.

“This means longer wait times for people experiencing non-urgent medical issues.”

Melanson said “seasonal pressures” like the recent holidays and respiratory disease season are further clogging emergency rooms.

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She said a “major surge” of patients are presenting to emergency departments, a “significant number” of whom are very ill. As well, there are ongoing staffing shortages due to ongoing vacancies and illness.

“This is always a busy time of year for our emergency departments, but this year was especially trying,” she said. “This situation is representative of ongoing challenges facing our health-care system right now.”

Click to play video: 'Patient speaks out about N.B. hospital capacity issues'

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Patient speaks out about N.B. hospital capacity issues

The emergency room situation in New Brunswick has been in the spotlight in recent weeks. Over the holidays, Vitalité Health Network, the province’s francophone health authority, asked that people avoid two of its emergency rooms unless they required critical care.

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Members of the public, as well as the New Brunswick Nursing Union, the Paramedic Association of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Medical Society, have spoken out about overcrowding and high wait

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Health Care

September 2, 2023admin

Why some health-care professionals in Canada are prescribing nature to patients – New Brunswick

A growing number of health professionals in Canada are writing a new kind of prescription that doesn’t need to be filled at a pharmacy.

“I think that it is one of the simplest and easier prescriptions that a doctor could do,” said nature guide Heather Fraser, who owns Exploring Nature’s Bounty in Moncton, N.B.

PaRx is Canada’s national nature prescription program, which was launched in B.C. in 2020, said Dr. Melissa Lem, its director. The initiative was started by the BC Parks Foundation and is being supported by health-care professionals who want to improve their patients’ health by connecting them to nature, she said.

The program has since spread to every province in the country, recruiting more than 11,000 health professionals across Canada who are now recommending nature time to their patients, Lem said.

“Whether you are a doctor, nurse, physiotherapist or psychologist, you can literally prescribe nature time to improve your patients’ health,” she said.

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Health-care providers in Canada are prescribing 30,000 scripts per month, according to Lem.

Her recommendation is to spend at least two hours in nature per week, with sessions lasting at least 20 minutes at a time.

Fraser said she is eager to get involved in the program in New Brunswick by taking patients out for their dose of nature therapy.

“It is that serenity, that peace; it takes away all the stress. When you are out here, you can be quiet if you want. The birds are in the trees, too. It is the sound and peacefulness that you have when you are out in nature,” Fraser said.

The health benefits of getting grounded in nature,

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Health Information

August 8, 2023admin

Waiting periods for counselling in N.B. 3 times the national average: data – New Brunswick

A snapshot report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that only 60 per cent of Canadians reported their health was good, compared with 72 per cent just two years ago.

Data shows that the Atlantic provinces reported a higher proportion of the population saying primary care providers weren’t taking new patients.

The report also showed New Brunswick has an average wait time of 66 days for mental health counselling, three times the national average, which is 22 days.

It comes against the backdrop of both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick’s health-care systems facing enormous strain and staffing shortages.

“These are long-standing challenges for the health-care system, it’ll take time for the data to catch up with the efforts and the measurement to change,” said Kathleen Morris, vice-president of research and analysis with CIHI.

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She said some of the numbers are significant, including that 27 per cent of Canadians diagnosed with a mood or anxiety disorder have not had their mental health needs met.

“It’s a tough situation,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “We know mood and anxiety disorders are a big piece of mental health but they are not the only illnesses … and they are looking to try and increase the range of mental health conditions.”

The report also showed there was 13 per cent reduction in surgeries in New Brunswick during the first two-and-a-half years of COVID-19.

It was lower in Nova Scotia at nine per cent.

Alexandra Rose with the Nova Scotia Health Coalition said this has all led to a compounded strain on the health-care system.

She said it cannot keep pace with the aging population and the population that is now seeing health decline in addition to a global pandemic.

“It’s put a massive strain on an already

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Health Care

April 27, 2023admin

N.B. health-care workers applaud extra pay, coalition calls for pay equity – New Brunswick

Special care homes are applauding a move by the provincial government in providing a pay increase for personal support workers.

The budget allocated $44.9 million for pay increases. The money will be used to give a $2.50 an-hour increase to special care home workers and home support workers, who were previously earning $16.50 and $17.50, respectively.

One special care home just outside the Fredericton region told Global News that finding personal support workers has become increasingly difficult with the lack of wages for workers.

Owner Cristie Dykeman said that many smaller homes struggle to compete in recruiting and retaining workers.

New Brunswick seeks nurses from Quebec amid health-care worker shortage

New Brunswick is using hefty signing bonuses and a plethora of benefits to attract nurses from Quebec and other provinces.

Horizon Health, a health authority that delivers medical care on behalf of the New Brunswick government, held a hiring event at a Montreal-area hotel on Tuesday.

The event sought to draw nurses interested in working in New Brunswick with an offer that includes the promise of up to $10,000 in signing bonuses, up to $5,000 in relocation costs and other benefits.

New Brunswick is not the only province vying for nurses. A widespread shortage of health-care workers increasingly has provinces competing with one another to attract qualified nurses, but experts say poaching workers from elsewhere in Canada will not address the root cause of staffing shortages.

Kerry Kennedy, director of talent acquisition with Horizon Health Network, said the Montreal event was not a job fair but was targeting nursing candidates who had expressed interest in working in New Brunswick.

“We’re all in a candidate-driven market and trying to do the best that we can to recruit and retain the nurses that we have,” she said, adding that New Brunswick’s low cost of living and good work-life balance were among the reasons that health-care workers could be drawn to the province.

Trees at Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. Horizon Health Network cites New Brunswick’s natural beauty and proximity to the ocean as one reason nurses might be drawn to work in the province. (Credit: iStock/Getty Images)

Horizon Health Network is holding similar events across the country, in Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto. Kennedy said the first 120 applicants will receive customized treatment and help to move to New Brunswick.

That “custom” treatment could include help paying for lodging or assistance with a partner finding a new job

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