Nova Scotia announces help with private mental health care

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The Nova Scotia government has established a $10-million program that will publicly fund non-urgent mental health-care services provided by existing private professionals.

“We made a commitment to Nova Scotians on universal mental health care that no matter where someone lives in the province, no matter what issue they are facing, they can get the mental health care and support they deserve for free as part of our publicly funded system,” Addictions and Mental Health Minister Brian Comer said Wednesday.

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Comer said the new program “will help connect more Nova Scotians to the care that they need at no cost.”

The minister said the program starts with a targeted, manageable approach by leveraging the private sector to boost access to non-urgent mental health-care needs for mood and anxiety disorders.

“Government will publicly fund qualified professionals, social workers, psychologists and registered counselling therapists to provide non-urgent mental health care,” he said. “ It will help with capacity and eventually shorten wait times for these much-in-demand services.”

The program will be phased in.

“We will test and try and learn,” Comer said, adding that a  request for proposals to secure a billing administrator for the program was issued Wednesday and additional hiring and recruitment processes will identify the private sector professionals to provide these publicly funded services. 

“Once available later this spring, Nova Scotians who call the provincial intake line will be assessed and could be eligible to be covered for support for anxiety and mood disorders,” Comer said.

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The provincial mental health and addictions intake line, 1-855-922-1122, is an in-person help line for Nova Scotians with mental health or addiction concerns that is accessible Monday through Friday, and where voicemails can be left on weekends.

Francine Vezina, executive director of the provincial office of mental health and addictions, said the new program will operate by assessing the needs of self-referred or physician-referred Nova Scotians who call the provincial intake line.

The initial assessment by a clinician will determine the caller’s needs and the best match for their care, Vezina said, and if they are a good fit for care from a private clinician, they will be directed accordingly.

The program will be available to children, youth and adults, and the $10 million will cover different aspects of the program, including monitoring and evaluation, billing infrastructure and clinician billing time, Vezina said.

“Paying private-sector providers for public access to health care is nothing new,” Comer said. “We’ve been doing it in this province for decades. That’s how we pay health-care providers like doctors, dentists and pharmacists, among others, for the services they deliver every day on behalf of Nova Scotians.”  

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Now, Comer said, the province will pay certain mental health care and addiction providers for these services as well. 

“They deliver on our behalf, too, because mental health and addiction care is health care,” Comer said. “Seeing a mental-health clinician when you need one should not be any different from seeing a doctor or a dentist or a pharmacist but it has been different because people who can afford to pay for care or those lucky enough to have private health insurance have had far more access to mental health and addictions care than those who do not.”

Kathleen Trott, deputy minister of addictions and mental health, said the priority of the mental health and addictions office is healthier people, families and communities.

Trott said amendments made to the Health Services Insurance Act allows the minister to establish public funded services like the program announced Wednesday to deliver mental health care as part of a publicly funded system. 

“Under this model, the government determines which services will be publicly funded and at what cost,” Trott said. “It includes fee-for-service models, using health-service codes that outline billing fees that participating providers will bill the province directly for the services provided to Nova Scotians.”

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Trott said the mental health and addictions office is starting small and the Phase 1 target is to recruit 50 private clinicians to provide services on a part-time basis, increasing that number to 250 over the next couple of years.

Vezina said 27,000 Nova Scotians were triaged through the central intake line from April 1, 2023 to the end of 2024. She couldn’t say what portion of the 27,000 would have sought care for mood and anxiety disorders but that the trend across the province has been an increasing demand for such care since the COVID epidemic.

The province is meeting the seven-day benchmark established as a timeframe for Nova Scotians seeking urgent mental health and addiction care to be seen, Vezina said.

Children and youth, however, are waiting 15 to 80 days to be seen for non-urgent care and adults are waiting 10 to 95 days for the same care. The provincial target wait for all non-urgent mental-health care is 28 days.

Comer pointed to increased provincial funding for community-based organizations that provide Nova Scotians access to mental-health resources and programs, the Dalhousie Centre for Psychological Health pilot project, virtual care and counselling by phone as examples that support the same end goal, universal access to care.

“We are making the necessary changes to position mental health care alongside physical health care, where it belongs, because treating depression is no less important than treating diabetes and treating addiction is no less important than treating asthma,” Comer said.

“These changes, investments and innovative solutions will all help chip away the walls that still separate mental health and physical health.”

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