New, For-Profit Health Clinic Opens In Halifax

HALIFAX — A new health clinic will open next week in Halifax. That alone isn’t surprising, but this particular clinic is raising eyebrows because it’s a for-profit facility, where patients must pay a subscription fee to be enrolled.

Bluenose Health Primary Care Clinic will officially open on February 27. It isn’t publically funded. Instead, subscribers will pay $27.50 per month (or $9.50 for children), with separate charges for appointments.

The clinic’s CEO, Randy Steven, says he isn’t recruiting nurse practitioners from inside the public healthcare system. Instead, Bluenose is hiring nurses who were already outside the public sphere.

“We’re not taking that away from the current health care system. We’ll look at those nurses and nurse practitioners that are tired out in the system and need a better balance between life and work,” Stevens said in an interview with Huddle.

Veteran nurse couldn’t find work in public system

Lori Anne Peckford is the first nurse practitioner hired for Bluenose Health Primary Care Clinic. She worked in Newfoundland’s public system until moving to Nova Scotia in 2021. She said she couldn’t get her foot in the door for a job in Nova Scotia.

“I started looking for work and then I wasn’t able to get a job,” said Peckford. “I had applied for everything that I was qualified for, which is a lot of things because I do have a broad range of experience. And, to be honest, I never even got a call back for an interview.

“I had worked with the health authority in Newfoundland for my whole career. So it kind of led you to think that there is nothing else. But since moving here and getting to know Randy I know that there are other options.”

Stevens, who is involved in real estate in Canada and the USA, acknowledges that many people in Nova Scotia are against private, for-profit health enterprises. His clinic faced online criticism after the social media group Halifaxnoise posted about the new clinic.

Although some commenters were supportive, many were worried Bluenose is a sign of a two-tiered system.

“Terrible, the ongoing privatization of health care. Access for those with [money], and at the expense of the public, accessible system,” one commenter wrote. “One of the key barriers to timely access to care is a shortage of health care workers. Every doctor and nurse working in a private care facility is not available to work in the publicly-funded system.”

But Stevens said there are too many people without a doctor right now who need help with chronic issues and other ailments. That’s one of the reasons he wanted to open Bluenose in the first place.

“We feel that we will offer a service to those people, like me as an example, that need ongoing monitoring,” he said. “I’m a diabetic, I have kidney issues, and I have a heart condition. I need to have ongoing monitoring of my systems and I can’t get that in the public healthcare system. I know that the government is struggling to rectify it but it’s going to take a very long time for them to do it.”

“The second part of it is the fact that doctors’ offices are for-profit. All pharmacies that have pharmacists on staff get paid. They’re not doing the work for free. They’re there for profit. But it’s a matter of who pays.”

Ten-day maximum wait time

Bluenose doesn’t know yet how many patients they will take on. But Stevens said they want to make sure their subscribers will only have to wait seven-to-ten days to see a nurse practitioner when they book an appointment.

Stevens said the idea for Bluenose Health Primary Care Clinic came when he lost his longtime doctor in Chester, NS, a couple of years ago. He found himself without a family doctor despite all the medical issues he was going through at the time.

“I had been seeing my GP for almost 40 years, and he saved my life a couple of times. Like all of us, he’s getting older and retired almost two years ago… Last November, I ended up having a quadruple bypass surgery and really didn’t have anywhere to go. The only option I had when I was out of the hospital was they gave me a little piece of equipment to take the staples out.”

“I needed to go see a doctor and I didn’t have one. So my wife called the walk-in clinic in Chester hundreds of times. And, fortunately, I was able to get an appointment during that period of time when I needed to get my stitches out.”

Stevens says he will continue to read people’s comments and he will also keep sharing about what Bluenose does and how the clinic will operate.

“I think part of it is education. And people have to understand exactly what we’re doing and what profit and nonprofit mean. I sat on the board of two hospitals for quite some time. And I realize how complex the medical system is in Nova Scotia as it is in every province. It’s not an easy fix.”

Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].