The walk-in clinic that was previously located on the third floor of St. Therese hospital has ceased to operate after 12 years of service.
The clinic, which was run by the Associated Medical Centre, was originally started in order to alleviate some of the pressures on the hospital’s emergency department. A recent shift in the Associated Medical Centre’s makeup, however, has resulted in the clinic shutting down.
“What’s happened here is that we’ve got a split in the group,” said Roxanne Bergheim, a business consultant for the Associated Medical Centre. Three physicians recently split from the clinic to form their own clinic. The reduced number of physicians makes the walk-in clinic unmanageable.
“There’s just not enough staff and physicians to look after that site and (emergency) call and surgery and clinic,” Bergheim said. “They are just getting divided too many ways.”
The walk-in clinic was essentially a private operation. The space was rented from Alberta Health Services (AHS) by the Associated Medical Centre, and was manned completely by the group – both in terms of staffing and physician care. There was no hospital staff working there, nor AHS staff of any kind.
Though this will mark a shift in the way some local residents receive their health care, Bergheim feels that it should be a manageable one.
“People get excited about it, but the vast majority of cases at that site weren’t necessarily emergencies,” she said. “The whole walk-in thing gets people away from continuity of care with their own physician. It’s always best to see your own physician if you can.”
According to Bergheim, many of the physicians will still work out of the Wellness Centre, and they will still share emergency duties at the hospital.
Dr. Van Rooyen, a member of the newly formed Independent Medical Practitioners, feels the change will simply result in patients accessing the same care at a different location.
“For the larger part, the makeup is exactly the same,” he said. “The public’s access to the walk-in clinic hasn’t changed at all. Just the place for the walk-in clinic has changed.”
“What usually happens with these patients is that they present to the hospital, they get triaged by the nurses, and if it’s not an emergent condition – if it’s a patient that requires walk-in services – they will be informed where in town the walk-in services are for that day,” Van Rooyen said. He added that patients can call the individual clinics in town to get information on walk-in clinics taking place that day.
The change has, however, created a transition period that has some local residents wondering where to go for care. One such resident, Danielle Noel, was trying to find some relief for her infant child on Oct. 16, as he had been running a fever for three days and appeared to be suffering from an ear infection.
“I thought I’d take him in to get some antibiotics, and I couldn’t get in to see a doctor,” she said.
Her first thought was to head to the third floor of the hospital to visit the walk-in clinic, but she found out right away it was closed.
“I went to the front counter, and I asked if there was a walk-in in St. Paul. The lady at the counter was really nice, and she said, ‘No, not anymore’. She said there was just the ER, and that it was about a six-hour wait.”
She tried calling some of the clinics in town, but since it was the noon hour, her calls went unanswered. She eventually made her way down to the Wellness Centre.
“I went down to the clinic, and when I got there they told me to go to the hospital. They said they weren’t taking walk-ins,” she said.
A doctor didn’t see her infant son that day. By the next day, her son was still sick, and she was considering taking him to Bonnyville or Edmonton for treatment.
Noel says she once visited the clinic on the third floor when it was still in operation and it was a much more efficient experience.
“It was good, it was fast. It worked,” she said. “There was no one in the waiting area . . . and they had somebody come look right away. I was in and out in an hour tops.”
She’s worried that the closing of the clinic may leave a gap in the area’s health care, as evidenced by her recent experience.
“It’s not necessarily an emergency . . . but he’s definitely uncomfortable and in need of antibiotics, and at that point what do you do? There’s no in-between now,” she said.
Though there may be some confusion during the initial transition, Dr. Van Rooyen feels that the end result will still be the same, and improvements are being made to the system, such as doctors offering evening clinic hours.
“Change is never an easy thing, and people do get used to the certain way that things are done,” said Van Rooyen. “We just decided that, seeing that we are no longer a part of the Associated Medical Centre, it will be easier to run walk-in services from our clinic here at the Independent Medical Practitioners . . . We are here to provide a service to the town, and that’s our primary function here.”
