Maritime Connection with Preston Mulligan: March 5, 2023: What role do you believe private health clinics should play in our health care system here in the maritimes?

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.