The New Brunswick government removed a headline figure on how many patients its collaborative care clinics had attached from an online health-care update five days before the province’s auditor general published an audit that found the number could not be relied on, a comparison of public records shows.
On April 29, 2026, the province posted a health-care update on gnb.ca stating that the 14 collaborative care clinics announced to that point “have attached 6,853 additional patients with an expected total attachment of 22,204.” That sentence appears in copies of the page captured by the Internet Archive on May 13 and May 16, 2026. A May 16 Canadian Press story on the province’s primary care plan described the clinics as having “removed 6,853 patients from the provincial waitlist.”
The version of the same page now on gnb.ca is marked “Updated September 24, 2026.” It no longer contains the 6,853 or 22,204 figures. In their place, the primary care section says early results from newly opened clinics “are considered promising” and cites individual clinics, including more than 1,100 patients attached on Fredericton’s north side. The page does not say why the earlier totals were taken out.
Five days later, on Sept. 29, auditor general Paul Martin released Volume II of his 2026 report. Its second chapter, an audit of the Department of Health’s collaborative care clinic expansion, singled out the April 29 announcement. The report says the department’s April 22, 2026, progress report, which supported that announcement, contained reporting inaccuracies in six of the 14 clinic reports, including arithmetic errors and incorrect values used in calculations. It also found six clinics with negative additional-patient numbers, ranging from nine to 261 fewer patients, and that 12 of the 14 clinics were identified as on track even though targets for key performance indicators had not been met.
The audit says the department arrived at 6,853 by subtracting each clinic’s baseline patient count from its current count. That measures the net change in patients recorded at a clinic, the auditor general wrote, but “does not necessarily measure how many newly attached patients received a primary care provider through the model.” Records can rise because of data adjustments or the addition of a physician, and fall when patients die, the report explains. “Without a reliable method to identify and verify newly attached patients, the Department cannot accurately assess or publicly report the model’s impact on patient attachment,” it says.
The wait-list questions run deeper than one number. The province has repeatedly tied new clinics to shrinking the NB Health Link wait-list. The audit notes a Dec. 8, 2025, government statement that 10 clinics confirmed in 2025 were expected to remove more than 14,000 people from the list, and a March 23, 2026, announcement that the St. Andrews clinic would attach all 603 people on its local wait-list within six to 12 months. Other provincial releases this year made similar promises for Nackawic-Millville (1,163 people within 12 to 15 months) and the Eastern Charlotte region.
Yet the auditor general found the department was not checking whether newly attached patients had actually come off the wait-list. When audit staff tried to determine how many had, “the Department was unable to provide the data needed to complete this analysis,” the report says.
The audit also puts the scale of the problem in a different light than the public wait-list. NB Health Link reported 126,576 people on its list as of June 10, 2026, but the department itself acknowledged the list relies on self-registration and is not a complete or reliable measure. A draft department analysis comparing active Medicare cards with records of patients assigned to a provider estimated that about 271,703 New Brunswickers did not have a primary care physician, more than twice the Health Link figure, according to the report. That analysis was still in draft at the time of the audit, and the auditor general found it did not show where unattached residents live. The draft also indicated that even if the clinic model met its participation and panel-size targets, it was not expected to attach everyone without a provider.
The department spent $34.2 million on collaborative care clinics in 2025-26, excluding fee-for-service billing and one-time and infrastructure costs, the audit says. Premier Susan Holt’s government has committed to 30 clinics by 2028.
In its formal responses printed in the report, the Department of Health agreed with the recommendations. It said a new method for tracking attached patients took effect April 1, 2026, requiring physicians and nurse practitioners to manage patient rosters through the Medicare claims billing system, which it said will be used to validate performance data. It also said it will resume oversight of the NB Health Link patient registry and develop a process to verify whether newly attached patients were previously on the wait-list. A June 2026 provincial release said responsibility for the wait-list is to move from Medavie Health Services New Brunswick to the department by December.
Several questions remain open. The public record does not show whether the province intends to publish a corrected attachment total, whether the 6,853 figure will be restated using the new Medicare roster method, or why the update was revised on Sept. 24. Canada News Media has not independently tested the department’s patient data; the findings above are those of the auditor general’s office and the province’s own published statements.
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Sources: Auditor General of New Brunswick, 2026 Report Volume II, Chapter 2, Collaborative Care Clinic Expansion (PDF, paragraphs 2.37 to 2.74 and Appendix I) and news release, Sept. 29, 2026; Government of New Brunswick, “Government provides update on health-care system” (current version, updated Sept. 24, 2026) and Internet Archive capture, May 13, 2026; provincial releases on Nackawic-Millville, Eastern Charlotte, St. Andrews and the wait-list transfer; The Canadian Press via CTV News, May 16, 2026.
