Patients in hospitals waiting for nursing home beds at ‘crisis point’: Horizon Health CEO – New Brunswick
Horizon Health Network’s CEO is calling for “urgent systemic change,” saying the number of people in hospitals waiting for nursing home beds is at a “crisis point.”
Margaret Melanson painted a bleak picture of New Brunswick’s emergency departments while addressing the province’s legislative public accounts committee.
“We’re moving towards having regional nursing homes, as opposed to regional acute care hospitals,” she said.
She said the result has been ambulance offload times double that of the national benchmark, patients having to be treated in hallways and ER wait times that last hours or days.
Melanson said it’s essential for the province to first solve the mounting pressure for long-term care beds.
Get weekly health news
Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.
“It’s reached a crisis point now. Forty per cent of your acute care beds to be filled with people that do not require to be there is honestly an anomaly,” she said.
“This is incredibly frustrating to us, and you know, up until now, not really any light, if I can say, with regard to change that is going to alleviate the situation.”
Meantime, about a third of New Brunswickers — 238,000 patients — are now waiting to be attached to a nurse practitioner or family doctor.
Liberal MLA Sam Johnston told reporters government is working to make those changes.
“Challenges with the health-care system in New Brunswick are nothing new,” said Johnston, who represents Miramichi Bay-Neguac.
“We will come up with solutions to improve bed space in hospitals and primary care aspects in the community.”
However, Melanson said that without “urgent systemic change,” the consequences could be severe.
“The teams work tirelessly daily to see surgical care proceed despite these bed challenges; that is not indefinite. We will have surgical interruptions because we will not have any other places to place patients,” she told MLAs.
For PC MLA Bill Hogan, who represents Woodstock-Hartland, Melanson’s testimony was worrying.
“I’m really concerned about where we’re headed,” he said.
Green Party Leader David Coon said Horizon Health clearly needed more support.
“The health-care system is badly underfunded. [Melanson is] expected to run Horizon Health without the money necessary, and it’s falling apart,” Coon said.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
link
