Premier Remains Mum on Fate of Rural Hospitals

Following the sudden announcement this week that the Liberal government will close hospitals in New Waterford and North Sydney, the NDP Caucus is calling on Premier McNeil and the Nova Scotia Health Authority to release the names of any other hospitals currently under review.

The Leader of Nova Scotia’s NDP said, “The Premier’s handling of this announcement has been high-handed, top-down and inexcusable.” Gary Burrill says, “Communities need to be spoken with and consulted, not decreed to. Closing a hospital is no small thing, no wonder people are concerned that their community could be next.”  

The Premier told reporters yesterday that there are no plans to close other emergency rooms in the province but said that the services offered at other hospitals could change. 

While in government, the NDP opened Collaborative Emergency Centres to help keep health care services available in communities across Nova Scotia.

Premier McNeil was in Pugwash just prior to the last provincial election. In promising a new hospital, he said, “We’ll have shovels in the ground in 2018.” Now at the halfway point of the year, the province is still working on a plan, the latest in a series of plans going back thirty years.

Given the announcements around the province, a replacement for the Pugwash Hospital seems about as real as emergency service at the current facility.