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Health minister acknowledges two clinic models are competing for staffing
Published Jan 20, 2026 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
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Health Minister John Dornan says NB Health Link ‘won’t be necessary’ in the future if his government can deliver on a plan to match all unattached New Brunswick patients to a primary care provider. Photo by Barbara Simpson/Brunswick NewsArticle content
Health Minister John Dornan says NB Health Link “won’t be necessary” in the future if his government can pull off its plan to match all unattached New Brunswick patients with primary care providers.
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This differs from the evolving vision of the former Blaine Higgs Progressive Conservative government, which initially brought in NB Health Link clinics as a temporary measure in 2022, but hinted over time the clinics wouldn’t be going away anytime soon.
“Our goals are to have everybody in New Brunswick linked with a primary care provider, and so if that bears fruit, if we see that to its conclusion, at some point Health Link will not be necessary,” Dornan said in an interview.
During the 2024 provincial election, the Liberals campaigned on a promise to establish “at least” 30 new collaborative care clinics by 2028. So far, 11 collaborative clinic announcements have been made, although the majority have been expansions of existing primary care practices.
In her first state of the province address last year, Premier Susan Holt committed to increasing the percentage of people with a primary care provider from 79 per cent in 2024 to 85 per cent in 2028.
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That 2028 target, if reached, would bring the province back to 2022 levels – the same year the PCs rolled out NB Health Link clinics amid a growing primary care waitlist.
Last May, Holt told reporters that the province may meet its goal of matching all unattached New Brunswickers with a primary care provider ahead of schedule.
That goal, which has a 2029 timeline, was set by Horizon and Vitalité health networks, which are rolling out new family health teams.
Questions have surfaced about the effectiveness of NB Health Link clinics, with some patients unable to get appointments due to a staffing shortage within that system.
Dornan acknowledged to Brunswick News that NB Health Link clinics and collaborative care clinics are competing for the same staffing resources.
“Some (primary care providers) have decided not to (join collaborative care clinics) at this point, and so they are working with Health Link and they’re valuable employees and Health Link has used them quite well, but at the end of the day, we’re competing for the same health-care providers and we hope really that more will come to the collaborative care clinics,” Dornan said.
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Medavie Health Services New Brunswick, a private company, administers and manages NB Health Link, which uses health-care providers already working in the system to staff its 11 clinics based on their availability.
“Rather than having the program compete with our partners for precious primary care resources, NB Health Link works with our (regional health authority) partners to identify health-care professionals already working within the system who have capacity to contribute time to the program,” Christianna Williston, spokesperson with Medavie Health Services New Brunswick, said in an email.
As the NB Health Link system rolled out in 2022, the New Brunswick Medical Society cautioned that the initiative shouldn’t be a replacement for other plans to grow human resources in the health-care sector.
“While options like NB Health Link are beneficial in improving primary care access in the short term, we need to increase our training capacity and enhance recruitment efforts urgently if we are to make meaningful, sustainable progress on the issue,” then-NBMS president Dr. Michèle Michaud said in a statement at the time.
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In January 2023, then-PC health minister Bruce Fitch told reporters that he expected the recently implemented NB Health Link model would continue to work despite ongoing staffing challenges within the health-care system.
“We’ve seen the waitlist go down,” Fitch said during a tour of a Fredericton NB Health Link clinic.
NB Health Link ‘put together at time of desperation’
More than 24,000 patients are currently receiving “longitudinal care” through NB Health Link clinics, according to Medavie, but that figure represents just roughly 19 per cent of the 127,794 people on the primary care waitlist as of Jan. 1.
Longitudinal care is continuous health care provided by the same provider or team of providers over time, with a focus on relationship building through understanding a patient’s history, lifestyle and their long-term health goals (i.e. managing or preventing chronic conditions).
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About 50 primary care providers are part of the NB Health Link network, according to Medavie, but based on their current availability, they’re offering provider hours equivalent to only 10 full-time positions.
To serve the entire provincial primary care waitlist through these clinics, Medavie estimates it would require 34 full-time equivalent positions.
“Health Link was put together at a time of desperation,” Dornan said. “They helped a lot of patients. By no means have they helped every unattached person, but we’re hoping that the vast majority of them move to collaborative care clinics as openings become available, and in the meantime, those that can’t get in there, Health Link has been valuable.”
Medavie Health Services New Brunswick operates NB Health Link clinics on behalf of the provincial government. The company says it’s facing the same staffing challenges as other parts of the health-care system. Photo by Susan Johnson/Brunswick News
Green party Leader David Coon would like to see NB Health Link clinics folded into the Liberals’ collaborative care clinic model.
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When asked if NB Health Link clinics will be disbanded all together in the future or folded into the Liberals’ collaborative care model, Dornan didn’t answer directly.
“We’ve spoken to people at Health Link and already they’re helpful to us in getting people attached to the private groups,” he said. “They recognize that that’s our long-term goal.”
Last November, Dornan faced questions in the legislature about the province’s growing primary care waitlist, which had seen the addition of 10,000 patients over a six-month period.
Dornan initially attributed it to population growth, although the data didn’t support that.
The minister later told Brunswick News that the growing list was due to a variety of factors, including the promotion of NB Health Link, primary care provider retirements, “people moving to New Brunswick,” and “people who no longer need to be matched not coming off the list in a timely manner.”
In the months after NB Health Link was launched in 2022, Fitch suggested that the model wouldn’t be going away anytime soon, noting that other provinces were moving toward similar systems.
“We all know that nothing beats that eyeball-to-eyeball analysis of the caregiver (to the patient),” Fitch said, “but it’s a tool that we’re going to see around for a long period of time, because it is filling a need until we can get that waitlist down.”
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