By Stephen Kimber
January 20, 2007
Not so ‘weird’
While provincial politicians loudly debate the future of health care, a rural Nova Scotia GP and his nurse-wife are quietly showcasing one possible option — for patients 5,000 miles away.
Every Monday afternoon, Port Clyde physician John O’Connor and his wife Charlene travel to Yarmouth to set up temporary shop in the regional hospital’s telehealth department. There, using a video hookup, O’Connor “sees” patients living on a remote northern Alberta community.
The O’Connors, who relocated to Nova Scotia after nine years in Fort MacKay, say they’re delighted to be able to continue providing services to residents of the otherwise-doctor-less First Nations Reserve.
Working with two on-site nurses who deal directly with the patients, operate the camera and handle the paperwork, O’Connor conducts the usual patient interviews — “Have you lost or gained any weight?” he asks one patient he suspects has hypothyroidism — and then directs one of the nurses to pan the patient’s skin so he can see how pale it is and to check for swelling on her lower legs. Later, he faxes a requisition for blood work to the clinic. He’ll get the results back in a few days.
The O’Connors do supplement their video care with in-person follow-ups, flying out to Alberta every six to eight weeks, and they have an arrangement with a Fort McMurray doctor to see patients who need more immediate care.
“Initially, there were a few people that said, ‘Oh boy, is this ever weird,’” O’Connor told the Yarmouth Vanguard, but added, “for the most part they are quite happy with it.”
Especially when the alternative is no doctor at all.
Barb Clairmont, the telehealth facilitator at Yarmouth Regional, says her facilities are normally only used for education purposes or for consultations between patients and specialists. “It’s common for specialists to use this technology, but not general practitioners.”
Given the current doctor shortage in rural Nova Scotia, that may soon change.
Getting closure… or not
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia’s rural health authorities are still coming to grips with what last week’s sweeping recommendations on the future of health care in Nova Scotia will mean for their residents — especially in terms of emergency care.
In addition to the already much-discussed 103 province-wide recommendations for change, the consultants also conducted specific audits of the services each health care authority provides and made even more recommendations — 187 just for Pictou County, 43 for Cumberland, etc.. — for changing how local health care is delivered.
First-blush responses have run the gamut.
Pat Lee, CEO of the Pictou Authority, which hopes to have a plan to renovate the Aberdeen Hospital’s emergency department in place by April 1, was almost bullish, predicting implementation of the proposals will mean “better access to primary care, fewer residents not having access to primary care, and less patients in the emergency department because we will have more clinics open.”
Up the road in Amherst, Cumberland CEO Bruce Quigley was more cautious. Conceding that the report “sets out very clearly the burning platform for change,” the authority’s board unanimously agreed to accept the recommendations “subject to qualifications and questions we may have.”
The big one, Board chair Bruce Saunders told the Amherst Daily News, has to do with the mixed messages they’re hearing about emergency room closures. “[The government] made clear today there would be no ER closures, but does that mean there will be no closures, but you may be closing down so many hours a day or a week?... We have made it absolutely clear there will be no ER closures until we are satisfied that a proven method could be put in place to replace the existing status quo of these ERs.”
Let the haggling begin.
And they’re off
When the Queens Liberal Association met yesterday to choose a candidate to represent it in the next provincial election, only one name was expected to be on the ballot. But that would be better than the party managed in 2006 when no Liberal even contested the riding.
After 15 years on municipal council, Wayne Henley officially announced last week that he would be seeking the nomination. “It’s just something I have been longing to do,” he told the Queens County Advance, adding one of his key campaign planks will be to upgrade Highway 103 between Port Mouton and Shelburne County.
Having a Liberal candidate should make for an even more interesting race in what had once been a Tory stronghold. In the 2006 election, the original Liberal candidate was forced to withdraw for health reasons and the party, then in disarray, failed to replace him. That helped the NDP’s Vicki Conrad end the Tories’ 50-year hold on the riding. With many traditional Liberal voters switching to the NDP, Conrad eked out a victory over respected veteran Conservative cabinet minister Kerry Morash.
Can Conrad hold on to the NDP’s new rural outpost? Will the Tories sneak back up the middle in a three-way race? Can a well-known local Liberal politician bring the also-ran Grits back to respectability? Stay tuned.
Who’s a crook?
Westville’s mayor says town council and the local board of police commissioners will “act in accordance with the directives of Justice Minister Cecil Clarke” to fix what ails the town’s policing services. But that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.
Last week, Clarke gave the town until Feb. 15 to respond to a scathing Justice Department investigation that described the police board as “dysfunctional” and “counterproductive.” The report claimed there were serious conflicts between some board members and the police chief, and that the board had meddled in the department’s day-to-day operations.
To complicate matters — and make some councillors and board members get their hackles up — the report also refers to two board members it does not name as having “criminal convictions.”
Mayor Sandy Cyr, who told the New Glasgow News he’s disappointed the report’s innuendo has been generating speculation and misinformation among local residents, wants the minister to name names to remove the “umbrella of suspicion” now over everyone.
Despite that, Cyr says the town will meet Clarke’s deadline for a response. It doesn’t have much choice. If it doesn’t, the justice minister has already threatened to take unspecified drastic action.
You say ecosphere, I say…
So how do you define an “ecosphere?” That’s the dilemma Berwick’s Planning Advisory Committee is trying to comes to grips with.
Two entrepreneurs with Nova Scotia roots, Barrie Wamboldt and Ron Turner, want to transform a former one-and-a-half storey wooden apple warehouse on the town’s Front Street into a five-storey glass-and-brick greenhouse — and more.
“It just won’t be about apples anymore,” boasts Wamboldt. No kidding.
They call their first-of-its-kind idea an ecosphere and claim “environmental wonders will take place there.” For starters the facility will “oxidize, not burn” fuel pellets made from “waste material that is trucked to and buried in Lunenburg County.” The 200 tons of waste oxidized per day will create energy — electricity, natural gas and carbon dioxide — they can then sell as well as use to produce quick-grow crops, such as lettuce and beans. Even the waste ash will be used to produce construction materials.
Which makes it a…
Berwick planner Chris Millier isn’t sure. Part of his job is to help the advisory committee decide not only whether what he calls a “too-vague” proposal will work but also how to describe the property — currently zoned for commercial and warehouse purposes — in land use terms.
“What we have been told so far does little to narrow down the use of the property,” he says.
But Mayor John Prall — perhaps mindful of the 70 new full-time jobs whatever it’s called might create — is encouraging the advisory committee “not to think about how we can’t do this, but how we can.” He wants to keep the discussions with the entrepreneurs “positive, and make them feel at home,” he explained.
Breeding trouble
In 2005, when the home and school association at Amherst’s then-still-under-construction Spring Street Academy tried to warn the Department of Education that its shiny new $8-million elementary school building would be too small to handle all the students who would attend, officials pooh-poohed their concerns. The bureaucrats reassured them that declining population trends would take care of that little problem.
The bureaucrats obviously didn’t take into account the breeding habits of local residents.
Today the three-year-old school built to house 450 is filled to overflowing with 530 pupils. With a larger-than-usual primary class expected to arrive in September, “it’s at a point now that something has to be done now,” association president Molly Rose-Smith told the Amherst Daily News.
School board officials are scrambling to come up with options, including transferring some students to other schools.
Rose-Smith, who says the fact that the school is operating efficiently so far is a tribute to principal Barry Kelly and his staff, adds that school officials “have made it work up until now, but I can’t see how they’ll be able to do it in September.”
So much for population trends.
Butt check
Bridgewater residents will get a chance to let their elected officials know what they think of the town’s proposed anti-smoking bylaw during an informal council “briefing” session tomorrow evening.
In November, council agreed by a razor-thin 3-2 vote — with two members absent — to draft a tough new bylaw that will prohibit smoking on all city property, including streets and sidewalks.
The decision generated national news, sparked a smoke-in protest on the town’s two bridges — provincially-owned structures that won’t be governed by the bylaw — and even prompted one protester to set up a Facebook site to protest the “blaitent (sic) infringement on our civil liberties.” The site now has more than 900 members and features a video of John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band singing Power to the People.
At tomorrow evening’s meeting, ordinary residents will finally be able to see the actual wording of the draft bylaw — which was prepared with legal help from the Canadian Cancer Society — and comment on it. Councillors will listen and ask questions, but won’t likely vote on the bylaw until their next formal meeting.
http://www.stephenkimber.com/
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES: Amherst Daily News, Kings County Register, New Glasgow News, Queens County Advance, Southshorenow.ca, Yarmouth Vanguard
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