Clinic closes from lack of doctors
A major downtown clinic has shut up shop because half its doctors have retired and nobody else is allowed to take their place. Story shows up the bizarre PREM rule whereby young doctors can’t choose where they’re going to work, a system that’s been keeping Montreal short of family doctors for decades.
dwgs 14:54 on 2019-06-29 Permalink
Our GP is retiring in December, she’s been looking for someone to take over her practice for a couple of years, no takers for a good well established practice in a shared space in Westmount. Go figure.
Michael Black 15:03 on 2019-06-29 Permalink
I was told Ishould get a GP now, so in May get my name on the list. Something like 350npeople ahead of me, I don”t know how fast the list gies down.
Michael
Ephraim 19:16 on 2019-06-29 Permalink
Michael, after I fired my doctor for incompetence… I finally got a doctor via a referral. The provincial list…. I waited over 3 years and never heard a word.
Kevin 19:23 on 2019-06-29 Permalink
The only thing dumber than the PREM system is the idiotic Montrealphobic bureaucrats running it.
They operate on the assumption that hospitals are only for people who live in the immediate vicinity. Live in CDN-NDG and can’t get a family doctor? It’s because the borough has 4 hospitals.
Kate 08:41 on 2019-06-30 Permalink
I put myself on the list a couple of years ago on the government site and finally got a call from the local CLSC a couple of months ago. I was directed to a brand-new clinic in my neighbourhood, took the day off work (appointment in the middle of the day, no choice) and went over, only to find that they’d never heard of me.
The building this clinic is in is so new that it’s not finished yet, although the clinic’s operating on the third floor. I was amazed that although the receptionists all had terminals, in this brand new building, when they were trying to locate me in the system they were flipping through binders of ratty-looking printouts with post-it notes and other junk stuck all over them, just like something from the 1980s.
Anyway, they eventually got back to me – some sort of miscommunication wth the CLSC – I got at least three automated phone reminders from the government about this second appointment – and I now officially have a GP, although I have not yet seen him. The procedure now is apparently that if you’re in good health you don’t see a doctor. I’ve seen a nurse practitioner and she took my history, made some helpful suggestions, and was even able to write a prescription for the one Rx thing I needed.
In the future it seems if you’re lucky you may never have to see a doctor at all.