{"id":347148,"date":"2026-03-25T14:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/347148\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T14:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:15:11","slug":"new-virtual-health-care-provider-isnt-ready-but-there-are-no-delays-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/347148\/","title":{"rendered":"New virtual health-care provider isn’t ready, but there are no delays, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

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Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

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Health Minister John Dornan said Woodstock-based eVisitNB will continue to provide virtual health-care services to New Brunswickers for another 90 days after March 31.<\/p>\n

Last month, the province announced that eVisitNB\u2019s contract wouldn\u2019t be renewed and instead a new company would take over the service.<\/p>\n

Foundever, a Luxembourg-based company who operates the province\u2019s 811 Telecare service,\u00a0is supposed to take over by April 1.<\/p>\n

Dornan told reporters on Tuesday the company is not ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new provider is not ready to take over the service as of April 1 and we are expecting eVisit and the new provider to work together so that as of July 1, people will experience the same benefits,\u201d said Dornan.<\/p>\n

He added that despite the new provider not being ready, \u201cit\u2019s not fair to say there is a delay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AeVisitNB, a Woodstock-based company started by Dr. Hanif Chatur in 2020, is near the end of a four-year contract with the province. (eVisitNB)<\/p>\n

Dornan also said Foundever doesn\u2019t have a signed contract with the province to do the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are negotiating with the new provider currently \u2026 it\u2019s in the middle we\u2019ve identified a preferred provider, we’ve been talking with them and we\u2019re very close to signing a contract,\u201d said Dornan.<\/p>\n

He said there were 11 applicants to take over the service and Foundever was the province\u2019s first choice. Dornan said there\u2019s no reason to believe the first choice won\u2019t deliver the service.<\/p>\n

Dornan said New Brunswickers will have \u201cseamless\u201d virtual care with no gaps during the next few months of transition.<\/p>\n

Opposition parties call for local options<\/p>\n

The 90-day extension is built into eVisitNB\u2019s four-year contract, which expires this month.<\/p>\n

But, opposition parties don’t believe Dornan\u2019s claim that the extension doesn’t signal a delay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t have a contract with Foundever and that’s not a delay? I don’t know what else you’d call it \u2014 mismanagement, incompetence,\u201d said PC MLA Bill Hogan<\/p>\n

Hogan, the representative for Woodstock-Hartland, is hoping eVisit will still have a chance to renew their contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see the contract be extended indefinitely because it works really well and I don’t know why we want to reinvent the wheel when it already works well,\u201d said Hogan.<\/p>\n

The Green Party also had a pitch to replace Foundever.<\/p>\n

Leader David Coon thinks the delay will give the Liberals time to consider Vitalit\u00e9 Health Network to take on the service.<\/p>\n

\u201cBring virtual health care into the public system rather than negotiating with another company to run it privately,\u201d said Coon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-347148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}