Nova Scotia Health, IWK rolling out online booking service

Nova Scotia Health is expanding its online appointment booking service. This system currently includes the ability to book blood collection appointments at Woodlawn blood collection in Dartmouth and Colchester East Hants Health Centre in Truro. The service will be a new offering for the IWK; its blood collection and X-ray services will be added in the coming weeks.

On Sept. 16, online booking for blood collection will become available for appointments at Dartmouth General Hospital and the Lloyd E. Matheson Centre in Elmsdale. Patients wishing to book appointments online at these locations can visit http://booking.nshealth.ca as of Sept. 16.

The expansion of online appointment booking will continue in phases, with a few locations being introduced at a time. The first phases of expansion will focus primarily on blood collection, with diagnostic imaging, including X-ray, to follow. Additional locations will continue to be added to the online booking service over the coming weeks and months.​

“Online booking will allow people to self-schedule their appointments and we expect the expansion of our online booking system to have a significant positive impact on patient experience,” said Shauna Thompson, senior director of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. “We know that since COVID-19 has prevented walk-in service, trying to book appointments by phone has been extremely frustrating for patients. As we continue to add locations to online booking, we expect this process to be much more seamless.”

As new blood collection locations are added to the online booking service for Nova Scotia Health, these changes will be reflected in the locations listings on the blood collection website: http://www.nshealth.ca/blood-collection.​

As online appointment booking is introduced for diagnostic imaging at Nova Scotia Health, more information will be available at http://www.nshealth.ca/diagnostic-imaging.

As services are introduced at the IWK, these will be reflected on the IWK website at http://www.iwk.nshealth.ca.​ ​

Patients without internet access will continue to be able to make blood collection or X-ray appointments by phone. The phone number for booking appointments at Lloyd E. Matheson is now 902-893-5554, ext. 49999. Other phone numbers for booking remain the same as previous and can be found by location at http://www.nshealth.ca/blood-collection

Nova Scotia Health and IWK Health are partnering to offer this secure online booking service.