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‘We’re well behind the eight ball and trying to play catch up’
Published Jul 17, 2025 • Last updated 16 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Premier Susan Holt is pictured in this file photo. BRUNSWICK NEWS ARCHIVEArticle content
The “demographic storm” of an aging population and the former Higgs government’s failure to improve access to primary care has left New Brunswick “behind the eight ball” on the health file, Premier Susan Holt said on Thursday.
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That’s prompted a stinging response from Interim Progressive Conservative Leader Glen Savoie, who said Holt is failing to live up to her election promises and has now become more focused on “spin doctors than actual doctors.”
The premier’s comments came a day after the province agreed to Horizon Health Network’s request to initiate a 30-day “critical state” protocol that will see alternate level of care (ALC) patients in four of its hospitals move to the top of the wait list for placement in a long-term care facility.
On Thursday, Vitalité Health Network’s president and CEO Dr. France Desrosiers jumped in, asking the province to put Bathurst’s Chaleur Regional Hospital under the same protocol. Whether the province will grant the request is a mystery.
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Horizon’s request – made after weeks of overcrowding in hospitals in Saint John, Fredericton, Miramichi, and Waterville – means the protocol will be in effect for the next 30 days. It isn’t being applied to The Moncton Hospital, which is currently slightly under its bed capacity
Horizon president and CEO Margaret Melanson, who requested the critical state protocol, said the move was necessary because the number of ALC patients in Horizon’s hospitals had reached “unprecedented” levels. As of Wednesday, she said, there were 658 ALC patients in Horizon’s hospitals – 368 of whom didn’t need hospital-level care and could be immediately discharged if they had anywhere to go.
The problem, Melanson said, is a lack of long-term care home beds.
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The situation left Social Development Minister Cindy Miles facing uncomfortable questions about the Liberals’ progress since coming into power late last year. She focused on the need to improve home care supports, and how she didn’t want to see the critical state protocol have to be requested again.
But on Thursday, Holt came out swinging.
“Transforming primary care, as you’ve heard me say a million times, was not given priority by the previous government,” Holt said during her monthly public address in Fredericton.
“They committed to four collaborative care clinics (over) multiple years … when what we needed was a wholescale, aggressive transformation of the models of delivering primary care to make sure New Brunswickers had that access and weren’t finding themselves in emergency rooms.”
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Piled onto the Progressive Conservatives’ failure to make progress on primary care, Holt said, is “the demographic storm” of a growing population that’s still, on average, older than most other provinces.
“And so we’re well behind the eight ball and trying to play catch up, but our government is throwing everything we have at this.”
Holt then listed a swath of initiatives her government has undertaken on the health file, including “the assessment process that used to take months and months to get someone from social development to come into the hospital just to get the assessment done, to determine what bed (an ALC patient) might be eligible for.”
“We have been going after all of those things over these last seven months and making some progress, but the progress needs to be as quick as or quicker than the demographic storm that we’re in.”
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Savoie scoffed at Holt’s comments.
“Anybody with any sense of reason would understand that this is a problem that is decades in the making,” he said. “The issue here is that we have a premier who promised everything to everybody, that she was going to fix everything right away. And now she’s relying on spin and word salad to try to talk herself out of … the corner that she’s painted herself in. She left people with the impression that she was going to fix everything right away. And now she’s learning the hard truth.”
Later, Savoie was asked to weigh in on Horizon’s predicament. Again, he chose to turn the focus back on Holt and the Liberals.
“When they were in opposition, the sky was falling. Everything was in crisis,” he said.
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“And now we’re seeing a true crisis, where we have elderly people being left in situations in hospitals because they can’t find an ALC bed. And this government said they had solutions, and now we’re finding out the truth of who these people, who this government, really is.”
Vitalité’s request
In her letter to social development, Desrosiers said that 47 per cent of Chaleur Regional Hospital’s beds are currently occupied by ALC patients waiting for placement in long-term care.
“This measure aims to prioritize patients who no longer require hospital care but are awaiting placement in a facility better suited to their condition,” Desrosiers wrote. “Our goal is to ensure that a bed is available quickly for each person requiring acute care. Prolonging a patient’s hospitalization beyond what is necessary can pose risks to their health and hinder their recovery.
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“Currently, approximately 47 per cent of the beds at the Chaleur Regional Hospital are occupied by patients awaiting an alternate level of care. This situation consumes significant resources, impairs the hospital’s ability to provide acute care, leads to overcrowding, and extends emergency department wait times.
“Across the network, we have implemented multiple initiatives to improve patient flow. These efforts are yielding initial results: the average length of stay for ALC patients has decreased from 65 days in 2023-2024 to 58.5 days in 2024-2025, and the occupancy rate of our hospitals is now below 100 per cent. Despite this progress, occupancy rates remain above levels considered safe.
“We are actively continuing our collaboration with our partners, including the Department of Social Development, to facilitate a faster transition to community living environments tailored to patients’ needs, whether temporary or permanent.”
Brunswick News asked social development for comment, and received a statement.
“The Department of Social Development is currently in discussions with Vitalité Health Network officials about the critical state admissions process for prospective nursing home residents in their regional hospitals and is advising on next steps,” said spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane.
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