Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter has announced in a speech earlier this month plans for a $16-million collaborative primary care clinic in Queens County. The overarching goal is to bring Better Care Sooner to Nova Scotia residents by reshaping how emergency care is delivered.

The collaborative care clinic will have space for five  family  physicians, a nurse practitioner, family practice nurses and  other  health professionals.The new plans also call for an upgraded 22-bed  inpatient unit.

Additionally the Better Care Sooner is poised to:

-improve access to primary care, especially in smaller communities.

-make emergency care more patient-centered and streamlined.

-provide care that is better tailored to those whose needs are more complex (i.e. seniors).

-increase public awareness of 911 and the healthlink nurse line 811.

-make changes to the way health care is funded (reward better, patient-centered care).

The government states that roughly 84 percent of ER visits at the hospital would be better addressed by primary care.

Dexter says the province is committing $2.5 million to the project while the Region of Queens Municipality has committed $1 million.

About $11 million comes from the Queens Foundation and private donors, and another $1.5 million still needs to be raised.

Check out the whole story at http://www.canadaviews.ca/2010/12/23/improvements-will-ease-er-overcrowding-access-to-care/

Biography

Bob Kocher is a Principal at McKinsey and Company where he leads the McKinsey Center for Health Reform and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Engleberg Center for Health Reform.

Bob joins McKinsey and Brookings after serving in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy and a member of the National Economic Council.  In the Obama Administration, Bob was one of the leading shapers of the healthcare reform legislation focusing on cost, quality, and delivery system reform.  In addition, he was a leader of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” childhood obesity initiative and led the formation of the Partnership for a Healthier America and served on the Federal Advisory Panel charged with developing a national obesity strategy.  He was also co-leader of the Community Health Data initiative, a joint effort of HHS and the Institute of Medicine, to release healthcare data to spur private sector innovation to improve healthcare cost and quality.  In addition, he served as an active member of the Federal Food Safety Working Group and led economic policy related to the postal service and rural development and agriculture.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Bob served as a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he led McKinsey Global Institute’s healthcare economic research team, and served private and public sector healthcare clients.  He has worked extensively with hospitals, health systems, and policy makers in 18 countries including the US, Canada, UK, Middle East, India, and Asia.  In addition, he has led major research efforts to understand the economic incentives of the US health system, to look at why healthcare is so expensive, and to develop a framework for guiding health system reform around the world.

Bob is an active writer and public speaker on a range of healthcare topics including healthcare reform, healthcare economics, childhood obesity, improving clinical outcomes, and international healthcare policies and strategies.  He and his work have been widely published or quoted in Time, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Annals of Internal Medicine, McKinsey Quarterly, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.  He is the lead author of “Accounting for the High Cost of US Healthcare” and a 2009 update.

Bob received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University.  He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health.  He went on to complete his internal residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.  He is Board Certified and licensed in Virginia.