If the provincial government wants to reduce its health care budget, it should rely more on nurse practitioners and have more of them in nursing homes. That word coming from Sue Cole, who's the nurse practitioner at Loch Lomand Villa.
Cole tells CHSJ News emergency room care is 3 to 4 times the cost of care in a nursing home and a seven day stay in hospital costs an estimated 7 thousand dollars.
There are over a thousand nursing home beds in the Saint John region but only 300 are covered by nurse practitioners.
