Reaction to yesterday’s announcement of a unified approach to improving health care in Atlantic Canada is widely positive. Physicians in Newfoundland, P.E.I, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia will soon have the freedom to practice in any of the four provinces through a joint registry. “Doctors NS is very supportive of it,” says the president elect of Doctors Nova Scotia, Dr. Colin Audain.

When the federal government offered earlier this week to increase the amount of funding it sends to the country’s beleaguered provincial and territorial health care systems, it also made a few demands. Among them: that premiers make progress on reducing the regulatory barriers that prevent medical professionals from hopping over provincial boundaries. Ottawa’s support for increased medical labour mobility may accelerate a fundamental shift that is already happening across the country.

The crumbling Nova Scotia health-care system was offered a federal shot of adrenaline Tuesday, a proposal that would inject more than a billion dollars of new health funding into provincial coffers over a 10-year period. “As long as there is collaboration in determining what are the key priorities,” Dr. Leisha Hawker, president of Doctors Nova Scotia, said Wednesday of any conditions that could be attached to health funding for provinces contained in a fairly ambiguous federal government offer.

HALIFAX - Groups representing nurses and doctors are welcoming the federal government's health-care funding proposal but say some of the increase must be used to bolster staffing and improve primary care in a system where there is accountability in how the cash is spent.