N.S. patients waited for more than 70 hours in the ER for hospital admission: MLA

Emily Baron Cadloff · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Nov 06, 2025 12:12 PM EST | Last Updated: November 6

Paul Wozney says helium received a blunt appraisal of an overcrowded exigency country wherever helium was told immoderate patients had been waiting implicit 70 hours.

“It’s Armageddon here.”

Wozney, an NDP subordinate of the Nova Scotia Legislature, told The Canadian Press a health-care idiosyncratic gave him this statement erstwhile they called successful the mediate of their displacement connected Tuesday, which they called the “worst time connected record.”

Wozney, who represents the Sackville-Cobequid riding, said the idiosyncratic was fed up and acrophobic with the modular of attraction and hold times astatine the Cobequid Community Health Centre.

The Cobequid centre successful Lower Sackville, N.S., is successful a suburban neighbourhood of the Halifax portion and has nary inpatient facilities. Patients who request much acute attraction would person to question astir 20 kilometres to hospitals successful Halifax oregon Dartmouth.

On Tuesday, 18 of the wellness centre’s 26 exigency beds were filled by patients waiting to transportation to a larger hospital. Many of these were patients waiting to get admitted to acute attraction for cardiac issues, strokes oregon large bony breaks.

“These folks were sitting, housed successful the ER, successful settings that aren’t equipped to conscionable their needs for implicit 3 days,” Wozney said.

Paul Wozney is the MLA for Sackville-Cobequid. (Paul Poirier/CBC)

When these kinds of backlogs happen, unit aren’t capable to dainty arsenic galore patients that travel done the exigency department, Wozney added.

Staff had to crook distant 1 idiosyncratic who suffered a stroke, and they did not person the capableness to dainty them, helium said.

Wozney elaborate his telephone telephone with the health-care idiosyncratic successful a missive to Health Minister Michelle Thompson.

“I inquire you to instrumentality contiguous enactment to remedy the utmost pressures the CCHC Emergency department, attraction squad and patients are facing,” Wozney wrote successful the letter. “I petition that you pass to the radical of Sackville-Cobequid erstwhile your authorities volition present connected its committedness to grow this facility.”

Thompson was not instantly disposable for comment.

This is not the archetypal clip the Cobequid centre has dealt with a backlog. In 2022, Wozney said determination was a play erstwhile 11 patients waited for an inpatient transportation for implicit 70 hours. The wellness centre besides closes its exigency section betwixt midnight and 7 a.m.

In 2022, the Houston authorities announced a planned enlargement of the Cobequid centre. At the time, the authorities planned to adhd a gathering that would make 36 inpatient beds, and measure the existing exigency section for a imaginable enlargement oregon adjacent replacement.

“The minister, each she’ll accidental is that [the expansion] is being considered,” Wozney said. “Politics aside, existent radical with existent health-care needs merit existent answers.”

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