New health services, family doctor prognosis unclear for Dartmouth South
If you’re doing a check-up on family doctor coverage in South Dartmouth — how long is the waitlist, and how bad is it right here — you can easily get lost on public data dashboards and photo-rich plans published by Nova Scotia Health (NSH). You will also find detailed information about measles vaccinations, and upbeat stories about people who give, support, and receive care in Nova Scotia.
What you won’t find, however, are the hard numbers needed to conclude whether family doctor waitlists are shrinking or growing in our area. And in that you’re not alone.
“Nova Scotia Health is no longer giving us detailed information on the waitlist for family doctors, so we only have this anecdotal experience of people coming to our office,” Claudia Chender, MLA for Dartmouth South, told the Post. According the Chender, we do know there are “many people who aren’t attached to primary care. It continues to be a challenge.”
The situation might be improving. A new family doctor’s office, the Dartmouth South Primary Care Clinic on Portland Street, has been seeing patients since 2024, either as “Primary Care Provider” (family physicians and nurse practitioners, looking after a roster of attached patients), or as “mobile clinic,” an interim solution NSH puts in place for people waiting to be attached to a family doctor.
“We know there are needs in Dartmouth,” said Ashley Harnish, director of primary health care for NSH. Harnish told the Post of a planned future expansion of existing services in our area as well as a yet-to-be constructed “access location” planned for South Dartmouth. “South Dartmouth will see a growth in primary care. Folks having access to care within their community is such a critical component of our planning, and that is what we are striving towards.”
Details and timelines for the new “access location” have not been released, but Harnish notes that timelines are “not imminent.” Similarly, NSH did not respond to questions about how many patients the new Dartmouth South Primary Care Clinic sees, or how many residents of South Dartmouth are left without a family physician. With many new homes under active construction in the area, and without data, it is unclear whether these new and planned services will be enough to future-proof the system.
Harnish said NSH is aware of the change underway in the neighbourhood. “We know Dartmouth is an area that is undergoing significant population growth. We are planning for the future.” In the meantime, if you are not attached to a family doctor, Chender recommends: “Stay in touch with NS Health, advocate for yourself. And that is what we also do on behalf of our constituents.”
Do you have a waitlist or related experience to share? Write the Post at tips@southdartmouth.ca.