President of Doctors Nova Scotia calls walk-in clinic closure 'difficult' but not surprising

A Dartmouth walk in clinic is set to close permanently this weekend. The doctor, who operates Tacoma Family Medicine says the walk in clinic could no longer keep up with the increasing demand for healthcare without putting patient safety at risk. Doctor Colin O’dain is president of Doctors Nova Scotia. So First off, could I get your reaction to the news that the Tacoma clinic is closing on Sunday? The walk in, well, I I think it’s my initial reaction would be it’s it’s going to be a difficult situation for that community. I’m sure they rely on that walk in clinic a fair bit to get access to primary care. But given the fact that those clinics are typically run by family physicians and that we’re in a shortage of family physicians, not just here but nationally, it’s not necessarily a huge surprise that that the clinic might, might close down. Physicians are trying to find that work life balance in, you know, in their, in their practice now. Doctor Mohammed Al Jurigi, who operated the clinic, says the four doctors who worked there felt undervalued and underpaid for the service there were providing. Does that echo what you’re hearing from other doctors in the province? Well, I I would say that the contract that we just recently negotiated in the spring, the the goal of that contract is to stabilize primary care, more specifically the longitudinal care that you see when you have a attachment to a family doctor and that was what where the investments were made and that those were the priorities of that contract. And in that regard I think we’ve been quite successful in most of the feedback that we’ve received from family physicians has has been quite positive with respect to that. Now part of the walk in clinics don’t don’t fall under that umbrella. So they they probably didn’t receive the same level of investment, but in terms of trying to recruit and retain family physicians to provide long term family care and make it viable to run a family practice, we think that we’ve been fairly successful. It’s a model that’s been used in other provinces. A lot of the other provinces have looked at it and I’m at least one other province who negotiated after us, Manitoba, I believe that essentially just mimicked what we did here in Nova Scotia because they felt also that it was a very good way to try and recruit, retain family physicians to the province. Well, what kind of pressure to closures like this one put on the rest of the system? I’m just wondering where the patients tend to go. Is it virtually with Maple or do they end up in the ER? Well, there are a few different options for patients who would not maybe have access, routine access to family doctor. Emergency departments are one. Emergency departments are are struggling and they’re not ideally suited to to look after the needs of patients that have relatively minor issues that would be better better suited to be seen in a family physician’s office. So that’s created other pressures in the system. We’re not just short family doctors. The emergency department is under tremendous amount of strain as well. But to answer your question, there are virtual care options that are available that are being covered by the province and don’t even have to be paid for out of province, as well as pharmacy clinics and other mobile clinics that are that are also options for for people that don’t have that access to a family doctor. Well, the number of Nova Scotians looking for a family doctor reached an all time high of 156,000 as of March. Do you have any hope that that number will go down anytime soon? Well, I don’t know if I can put a a finger on a timeline with respect to when that number will come down. I’m I’m hopeful that that number will at least stabilize that. That number is complex. It’s not just related to the number of physicians in the province but it would also have to do with the number of people that are moving to the province as well. But our our hope is that the the contract has at a minimum decrease the likelihood of people leaving the province or leaving longitudinal family care in the province. More senior physicians hopefully will consider staying around longer and and not retiring while we can train and recruit new family physicians and and in that way bring down the number. But I I don’t really know how quickly that can happen, but I I think that the the contract that was negotiated last spring is just for sure a step in the right direction. Now the Houston government recently reinstated Dr. recruitment incentives for the Central Zone. Will that have any impact do you think? I would think that it would certainly been something that’s been helpful in other areas of the province. We’ve heard for a long time that the physicians in Central Zone have felt that that type of incentive would be useful in in the Central Zone as as well. So I guess time will tell if it’s successful, but I, I, I, I believe it’ll have a positive impact. All right. Well, Doctor O’dain, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it today. You’re very welcome. Have a good day.