‘We’re well behind the eight ball and trying to play catch up’<\/p>\n
Published Jul 17, 2025 \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 Last updated 16\u00a0hours ago \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 4 minute read<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n You can save this article by registering for free here<\/a>. Or sign-in<\/a> if you have an account.<\/p>\n The \u201cdemographic storm\u201d of an aging population and the former Higgs government\u2019s failure to improve access to primary care has left New Brunswick \u201cbehind the eight ball\u201d on the health file, Premier Susan Holt said on Thursday.<\/p>\n Advertisement 2<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS<\/p>\n Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.<\/p>\n Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.Get exclusive access to the e-Edition, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.Support local journalism and the next generation of journalists.<\/p>\n SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES<\/p>\n Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.<\/p>\n Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.Get exclusive access to the e-Edition, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.Support local journalism and the next generation of journalists.<\/p>\n REGISTER \/ SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES<\/p>\n Create an account or sign in to keep reading.<\/p>\n Access articles from across Canada with one account.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite journalists.<\/p>\n THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.<\/p>\n Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.<\/p>\n Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authors<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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 \u201cspin doctors than actual doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n The premier\u2019s comments came a day after the province agreed to Horizon Health Network\u2019s request to initiate a 30-day \u201ccritical state\u201d 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.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Vitalit\u00e9 Health Network\u2019s president and CEO Dr. France Desrosiers jumped in, asking the province to put Bathurst\u2019s Chaleur Regional Hospital under the same protocol. Whether the province will grant the request is a mystery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertisement 3<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Horizon\u2019s request \u2013 made after weeks of overcrowding in hospitals in Saint John, Fredericton, Miramichi, and Waterville \u2013 means the protocol will be in effect for the next 30 days. It isn\u2019t being applied to The Moncton Hospital, which is currently slightly under its bed capacity<\/p>\n 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\u2019s hospitals had reached \u201cunprecedented\u201d levels. As of Wednesday, she said, there were 658 ALC patients in Horizon\u2019s hospitals \u2013 368 of whom didn\u2019t need hospital-level care and could be immediately discharged if they had anywhere to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem, Melanson said, is a lack of long-term care home beds.<\/p>\n Morning Email Telegraph-Journal<\/p>\n Thanks for signing up!<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Advertisement 4<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n The situation left Social Development Minister Cindy Miles facing uncomfortable questions about the Liberals\u2019 progress since coming into power late last year. She focused on the need to improve home care supports, and how she didn\u2019t want to see the critical state protocol have to be requested again.<\/p>\n But on Thursday, Holt came out swinging.<\/p>\n \u201cTransforming primary care, as you\u2019ve heard me say a million times, was not given priority by the previous government,\u201d Holt said during her monthly public address in Fredericton.<\/p>\n \u201cThey committed to four collaborative care clinics (over) multiple years \u2026 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\u2019t finding themselves in emergency rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement 5<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Piled onto the Progressive Conservatives\u2019 failure to make progress on primary care, Holt said, is \u201cthe demographic storm\u201d of a growing population that\u2019s still, on average, older than most other provinces.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so we\u2019re well behind the eight ball and trying to play catch up, but our government is throwing everything we have at this.\u201d<\/p>\n Holt then listed a swath of initiatives her government has undertaken on the health file, including \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement 6<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Savoie scoffed at Holt\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody with any sense of reason would understand that this is a problem that is decades in the making,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 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\u2019s relying on spin and word salad to try to talk herself out of \u2026 the corner that she\u2019s painted herself in. She left people with the impression that she was going to fix everything right away. And now she\u2019s learning the hard truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Savoie was asked to weigh in on Horizon\u2019s predicament. Again, he chose to turn the focus back on Holt and the Liberals.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they were in opposition, the sky was falling. Everything was in crisis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Advertisement 7<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now we\u2019re seeing a true crisis, where we have elderly people being left in situations in hospitals because they can\u2019t find an ALC bed. And this government said they had solutions, and now we\u2019re finding out the truth of who these people, who this government, really is.\u201d<\/p>\n Vitalit\u00e9\u2019s request<\/p>\n In her letter to social development, Desrosiers said that 47 per cent of Chaleur Regional Hospital\u2019s beds are currently occupied by ALC patients waiting for placement in long-term care.<\/p>\n \u201cThis measure aims to prioritize patients who no longer require hospital care but are awaiting placement in a facility better suited to their condition,\u201d Desrosiers wrote. \u201cOur goal is to ensure that a bed is available quickly for each person requiring acute care. Prolonging a patient\u2019s hospitalization beyond what is necessary can pose risks to their health and hinder their recovery.<\/p>\n Advertisement 8<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cCurrently, 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\u2019s ability to provide acute care, leads to overcrowding, and extends emergency department wait times.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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\u2019 needs, whether temporary or permanent.\u201d<\/p>\n Brunswick News asked social development for comment, and received a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of Social Development is currently in discussions with Vitalit\u00e9 Health Network officials about the critical state admissions process for prospective nursing home residents in their regional hospitals and is advising on next steps,\u201d said spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Share this article in your social network<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Breadcrumb Trail Links New BrunswickNewsPoliticsThe IssuesHealth care ‘We’re well behind the eight ball and trying to play catch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-7713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Holt\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0717-lb-alcfolo.jpg\")
Premier Susan Holt is pictured in this file photo. BRUNSWICK NEWS ARCHIVEArticle content<\/p>\n![\"Telegraph-Journal\"](\"https:\/\/dcs-static.gprod.postmedia.digital\/19.1.4\/websites\/images\/identity\/logo-identity-tj.svg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n![\"opening](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752886892_797_1695845024791-TJ_-_V2.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n