Three times a week, Halifax resident Theresa Zukauskas phones the office of Nova Scotia Health Minister Randy Delorey.
She’s desperate for one thing: a family doctor.
“He actually has to meet with people who are in the crisis that we’re in,” Zukauskas says over the phone to Delorey’s assistant.
Zukauskas and her husband have been married for nearly five decades but it’s the last couple years that have turned their world upside down.
Her husband, Walter, has severe health issues and this is the second time the couple has searched for a family physician in Nova Scotia.
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“My first family doctor retired. Second family doctor, after three years, I finally found her and then she had a crisis in her family and then it took me another two years to find a family doctor and Walter had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” Zukauskas said.
“Well, Parkinson’s is really a systemic disease. It affects all areas of your living because the body functions all slow down,” she said.
The doctor they found right before Walter was diagnosed is now leaving the province.
“I’ve lost her because she had moved to Nova Scotia and found the system impossible.”
As of October 1, the Zukauskases are one of 37,339 people registered on a provincial waiting list called the ‘Need a Family Practice’ registry.
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Over the past year, only 4,331 people have been accepted into a family practice from the provincial waiting list.
But the actual number of people without a family physician is expected to be much higher, according to the provincial medical association for physicians.
“The unattached patients are a huge issue and the 37,000 number, really are only those patients who have called 811 and identified to the list, Kevin Chapman said, the director of partnerships and finance for Doctors Nova Scotia. “You know StatsCan and others, put the number of unattached patients at 90,000 or 100,000.”
In an emailed statement, Andrew Preeper, a spokesperson with the provincial health department says “recruiting and retaining family doctors is a priority.”
“Just last week, a new family physician joined a medical clinic in HRM and hopes to take on as many as 600 patients from the waitlist,” he wrote.
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Preeper adds the government recognizes there is no ‘quick fix,’ but believes there are a “number of initiatives and approaches we believe will help us recruit and retain physicians.”
The doctor shortage is an ongoing point of discussion for Doctors Nova Scotia membership, according to Chapman and the association points to some suggested ‘short-term solutions’ to the rising shortage.
“In Cape Breton, a year or two ago, they started an orphan patient clinic, between the health authority and the physicians down there and it was, simply, the physicians in that community, all of whom were practicing, each worked a shift here and there at this orphan patient clinic, where folks who really needed a family doctor could book an appointment and see a family doctor,” Chapman said.
While the Zukauskases continue to wait, Theresa believes there are some ‘effective changes’ that could be made to the registry.
“The registry, there wasn’t a lot of thought put into that registry, it should be prioritized,” she said.