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HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s health minister says the province’s efforts to recruit physicians is paying off, with 199 net new doctors added during the last fiscal year.
The health authority said in a statement Thursday it has welcomed 278 new doctors during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026. The province also lost about 79 physicians who either retired or left the province during the same period.
The physician recruitment rate is up 10 per cent compared to the year before.
Health Minister Michelle Thompson attributes the success to momentum in health-care recruitment.
“I think once you get that pipeline and that momentum going, I think it’s easier. It’s sometimes hard to get started, we were in a big hole, as folks know,” she told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
Thompson has been health minister since the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Tim Houston were elected for the first time in 2021 on a campaign to fix the province’s strained health-care system.
“We really do have a bit of a white glove service for physicians. We work really hard, Nova Scotia Health, the office of health-care professional recruitment, IWK (Health) and communities have been a really integral part in terms of helping us recruit not only physicians, but their families,” she said.
Of the new physicians who started in Nova Scotia this past year, 111 are family doctors and 167 are specialists.
“Recruiting more doctors results in more Nova Scotians being attached to a primary care provider, more health-care appointment opportunities, and faster access to specialists,” Houston said in a statement Thursday.
About 40 per cent of the new doctors in Nova Scotia were internationally trained, and the health authority says recruitment from the U.S. is up significantly with 33 American doctors joining the health-care system in the last fiscal year, up from 12 the year before.
The health authority says Dalhousie University’s medical school continues to be a key focus of recruitment efforts. There were 79 family medicine graduates in the fiscal year ending March 31, and more than half of them were retained in the province.
Of the 108 medical school graduates from other specialties, 39 per cent are set to stay and work in Nova Scotia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2026.
Lyndsay Armstrong, The Canadian Press
