FREDERICTON – New Brunswick’s premier is blaming a lack of long-term care space for serious overcrowding at four regional hospitals, as her government tries to fast-track patients out of those facilities and into nursing homes.
Susan Holt said Thursday that hospitals are struggling as they take on patients who should be in long-term care.
“This isn’t a surprise I think to New Brunswickers or to our government since we have seen over many years the challenges that hospitals have faced,” Holt told reporters during her monthly address in Fredericton.
Holt’s comments come in response to a request on Tuesday by the Horizon Health Network for the urgent transfer of patients in four hospitals to nursing homes. In a news release, Horizon CEO Margaret Melanson said more than 650 patients no longer require acute care in hospital but aren’t healthy enough to be discharged.
Calling the situation “unsustainable,” Melanson said the number of patients across New Brunswick waiting for transfer to a long-term care facility is the highest on record.
“If enough long-term care beds were available in our communities today, we would be able to immediately discharge 360 of these patients,” she said. “Roughly 40 per cent of all our acute-care beds are currently occupied by patients who have no medical reason to be in hospital.”
Melanson called her request to the provincial government a “measure of last resort.”
In response, Social Development Minister Cindy Miles agreed on Wednesday to open a 30-day window for patients at four hospitals to jump the provincial nursing home wait-list and be fast-tracked into long-term care. The hospitals are the Saint John Regional Hospital, the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton, the Upper River Valley Hospital in Hartland and the Miramichi Regional Hospital.
Melanson told reporters on Wednesday that it’s not clear how many hospital beds would be liberated over the next month by the government’s move to prioritize some patients. “It’s difficult to say exactly how many because it depends on beds becoming available in these long-term care homes,” she said. “Often they become available unfortunately when a patient passes away.”
New Brunswick has 78 licensed nursing homes with 5,373 beds, along with 431 adult residential facilities offering care to about 7,600 residents. In 2018, the province launched a project to open 640 new nursing home beds; so far 460 have been created, and space for another 180 is under construction.
Holt said that since her party was elected in October, the government has been working to bolster the long-term care sector and expand options such as home care to relieve pressure on the health system.
“The ideal situation is that people not find themselves in the hospital in the first place because they can get the care they need at home,” Holt said. “We have been working … to get the right system and supports in place.”
The premier said the number of seniors in the province waiting for care support at the beginning of the year was around 1,068. “But as Horizon’s call for crisis protocols reveals, there are more and more people in hospital right now waiting for the supports to return home or the ability to receive care in a long-term care facility,” she said.
Holt said population growth in recent years has resulted in the number of people requiring care growing at a rate that outstrips the number of long-term care beds available.
“We are well behind the 8-ball and trying to play catch up,” the premier said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2025.
— By Keith Doucette in Halifax
