Master plan for Cape Breton health care should be ready this fall

People who live in Cape Breton should have a much clearer picture this fall of how the Nova Scotia government plans to deliver heath care in the region.

Senior government officials involved in redesigning health care told a legislature committee Tuesdaytheir work to create a facilities master plan should be ready within five or six months.

"The final master plan document, very similar to what we did with the QEII project, will be available late this fall so probably late August or early September,"said Brian Ward, a director at the Department of Infrastructure Renewal.

The master plan will detail where specific services will be delivered and include details such as the size of clinics and their location.

The province has announced the closure ofboth the Northside General and New Waterford Consolidated hospitals. The promise is toreplace them with clinics and long-term care facilities.

According to Ward, the government is looking at provincial and municipally owned sites, as well as land that is in private hands.

"For New Waterford and for North Sydney, we're trying to at least look at three to four different locations in each of the communities to see what our facilitieswill fit on," Ward told reporters after his testimony before the health committee.

"We would need a site in North Sydney to build the laundry, the community health centre and also the long-term care [home]and in New Waterford,we'll need a site to build our long-term care [home]and our community health centre."

Dr. Kevin Orrell, senior medical director for the redevelopment project,said the new facilities willmake it easier for the health authority to recruit and retain doctors, nurses and other medical staff.

He told the committee about two geriatric specialistswhovisited Cape Breton as part of a recruiting effort, butdecided instead to take jobs in New Brunswick.

"And it largely had to do with facilities with which they would have to work as they currently exist [here], and what they were offered in New Brunswick," Orrell said.

"If we had what we foreseeas being a health-care centre that meets those kinds of needs, they would have been much more interested in Nova Scotia," he said.