PORT HAWKESBURY: A local candidate said the departure of a family doctor to a nearby hospital is a mix of good and bad news.
In a Facebook post on Feb. 3, Dr. Steven DeRoche confirmed he closed his family practice at the Arichat Medical Clinic to accept a position as a hospitalist at the Strait-Richmond Hospital.
Then on Feb. 18, the Arichat Medical Clinic issued a press release that as a result, remaining doctors Laurie and Scott MacNeil will only see rostered patients and will no longer accept walk-in patients.
Since the remaining doctors can no longer absorb DeRoche’s entire patient load, this will leave some without a physician, the release said. The doctors said they will to retain as many “high need” patients as possible.
This will also impact Monday evening and Saturday afternoon clinics, the release said, noting the days will be treated as regular clinic hours in which patients will need to book an appointment.
Richmond Progressive Conservative candidate Trevor Boudreau said local doctors have been filling in as temporary hospitalists at the Evanston facility for years, and the situation was helped when the province decided to increase the salaries for hospitalists.
“Having someone full-time there allows our other doctors to focus on all their other things,” Boudreau told The Reporter. “They have their regular family patients, (Dr.) Collins with the nursing homes, that sort of thing. It allows our doctors to put more focus on those things, which is good. They’re not getting burned out as much. They’re not doing 24-hour shifts, around the clock, for seven days at the Strait. Now we have somebody who’s there doing that.”
He said DeRoche will care for patients staying at the hospital.
“It’s a good thing for the hospital to have him there full-time because it’s consistency,” the PC candidate noted. “It’s very important in a hospital and it’s great for our community hospital. The struggle is on the other end, where he has to give up his family practice to do so. They’re paid less as family doctors to do a very important job.”
While DeRoche’s primary focus will be hospital, work Nova Scotia Health Authority spokesperson said there is a possibility he will also work in the hospital’s emergency department.
“That is certainly not ruled out as a possibility,” Elliot said.
Boudreau said this does leave people without a primary care physician, something which affects people not just from the Louisdale and Isle Madame areas, but all over the Strait area.
“That’s going to be a struggle because there was an advantage of having that walk-in clinic,” he noted. “That was being able to see people who may not even have had a family doctor. Sometimes they would take them in, that maybe weren’t part of the clinic sometimes, but they could get in there. The closest really walk-in clinics now are going to be in Antigonish.”
Like those in charge of the Arichat clinic, Boudreau encourages former patients of DeRoche to call 811, or register online at: needafamilypractice.nshealth.ca to be on the “Need a Family Practice” list.
Along with this recent departure, Boudreau said there is a doctor shortage at the Dr. Kingston Memorial Community Health Centre in L’Ardoise, and with over 55,000 Nova Scotians on the wait list for a primary care practitioner, he pointed to the PC Party’s “Hope for Health” plan.
After forming government, the PCs are promising that on day 1 of their mandate they will institute Telehealth and virtual care for everyone who doesn’t have a primary care provider.
“We really believe we still have to recruit the doctors that we need,” he said. “There’s nothing that beats having consistency with a family doctor that is yours or a nurse practitioner that’s yours that you can have that continuity of care. But there are people who need things now.”
The PCs claim their plan will give more authority and flexibility to local decision makers in tackling local issues like health care practitioner shortages. He noted that there are many communities across rural Canada looking for primary care practitioners, and those recruiting have to be more creative, specifically regarding health care professionals from other countries.
“The local administrators have a box that they have to fit everything into. If you have three family doctors, you can’t go out of that box and say, ‘well, we’re going to hire a nurse practitioner or somebody for this area now to fill this gap,’” Boudreau said.
While acknowledging that many people prefer to use doctors, rather than other alternatives and services in other sectors of health care, Boudreau said there is a role to play for everyone within collaborative care.
“We can all be helping each other out, and we do,” he added. “It’s about support networks for everyone.”