Events Calendar

Check out our Events Calendar for Programs and Services happening this month!

Provincial Mental Health Crisis Line now available

If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, there is help available at AVH and through a province-wide Mental Health Crisis Line.

ECG service at WKM and EKM temporarily suspended

For information about ECG service at other AVH sites, visit here.

New Bundled Birth Service

The electronic bundled birth service is now available at Valley Regional Hospital.

Kings County Breastfeeding Peer Support Group starting in June

Starts June 13, running every Thursday from 10 am – noon at the Louis Millet Recreation Centre in New Minas.

Public Reporting of Patient Safety Indicators

Learn more about provincial and DHA results related to clean hands andClostridium difficile.

Get the scoop on emergency care in NS!

Watch this video about emergency care – emergency departments (EDs), paramedics, collaborative emergency centres!

Search Programs & Services

Annapolis Valley Health offers an extensive listing of programs and services to help you be healthy and stay healthy. To learn more, browse or search through our Program & Services listing.

Events Calendar

Check out our AVH Events Calendar to find an event in your community.

Redefine. Rebuild. Reconnect

Visit our tri-district website featuring Changing our Picture of Health a series of videos and tools to help you understand (or facilitate) the social determinants of health.

March 22 Letter to the Editor regarding Lab Services and Chipman Food Services

Mar 22, 2012

No lab layoffs

I wish to address some of my concerns about the accuracy of Allan Lynch’s March 17 opinion piece. Regarding his statements about Annapolis Valley Health, I want to provide the following clarification:

We did not lay off 11 lab technicians, as indicated by Mr. Lynch’s article. In January, we brought in new technology to AVH that is available in sites across Canada which allows caregivers to perform testing at the patient’s bedside. This offers safe, quality, and often faster care for our patients. It allows us to be more efficient by sending the remaining routine tests to our main regional lab.

No individuals lost jobs in the change. To prevent layoffs, we held vacant positions and offered affected lab employees other positions across the district, consistent with union contract protocol.

The Chipman building houses the district storage and materials warehouse, training and education facilities, and as many as 160 employees in mental health and addictions services, finance, IT, people and organizational development, environmental Services, Security, Quality and Safety, and Executive. This location also provides outpatient services to mental health and addictions services clients and their families.

At the Chipman site, there is a small cafeteria operating as part of the district food service from Monday to Friday with limited hours. Some food items are delivered to Chipman from Valley Regional Hospital during regular supplies transport. Our food services prices are the same throughout the district; it is not subsidized and everyone pays for their own food.

We are proud to make healthy food choices available to our employees, physicians and patients/clients — modelling the way for our community to be healthy and stay healthy.

These are challenging times in our communities. We are working together to improve the health status. We need to use our resources as efficiently as possible. Decisions on these issues and the resulting changes are not always easy — for our organization or our community. We believe it is important that our community has correct information.

Janet Knox, president and CEO, Annapolis Valley Health