P.E.I. patient registry numbers rose last month, despite premier's assertion they would fall

In the last week of February while delivering the state-of-province address to the Rotary Club, Premier Dennis King said the number of Islanders on P.E.I.'s Patient Registry would fall in February.

"About 1,000 Islanders will come off the patient registry this month. This month, February 2024, will be the first month in over a decade where our province has seen more patients come off the registry than went on," King announced to applause during his speech on Feb. 26.

"We have much further to go but that's a good start. It's a sign that while it's taken longer than I or anyone else would have wanted that we're starting to see the benefits of the investments that we've been making."

On March 4, exactly one week after the premier spoke those words, Health P.E.I. posted a patient registry update.

It showed an increase.

There were 36,970 patients on the registry, 299 more than were reported in mid-February, and 969 more than the number posted in January.

Numbers and more numbers

When asked for comment, the premier's office responded that Health P.E.I.'s posted numbers are not always up to date.

Health P.E.I. confirmed the manual counting involved in updating the numbers can mean that the posted numbers are not always an accurate reflection of the current situation.

The agency did not provide absolute numbers for how many were on the registry Feb. 1 versus March 1, but it was able to say that 608 Islanders were taken off the registry in February, and 982 were added. That's a net gain of 374.

Health P.E.I. noted it was in the process of assigning a further 400 Islanders to new doctors, and so removing them from the registry. In the meantime, however, a family practice in Summerside with 2,500 patients closed.

Health P.E.I. has not yet said what will happen to those patients and whether they will be added to the registry, but these two known incidents could see the patient registry go up by more than 2,000.

A big drop in 2020

In addition, King's statement that registry numbers had not fallen in the last decade was not accurate.

Health P.E.I. reported a slight decline in numbers in June of last year, and at one point in 2020 it was down more than 20 per cent.

In January 2020 there were 16,012 patients on the registry. By May the number had fallen to 12,511. Health P.E.I. says the change was the result of a list cleanup, where it removed people no longer looking for a doctor.

Registry numbers resumed their climb after that, but did not pass the 16,000 level again until June 2021.

During the election campaign in the spring of 2023, King's Progressive Conservatives promised to eliminate the patient registry in 24 months.

At the time, there were 28,546 on the registry.