The patient says he tried calling the Group Health Centre walk-in clinic for three days in a row and no one answered<\/p>\n
When a local man experienced frightening symptoms \u2013 blood in his urine over the course of several days \u2013 he reached out to his doctor\u2019s office at Group Health Centre to make an appointment.<\/p>\n
He was told he would not be able to get an appointment until December, and when he told them he might go\u00a0to a walk-in clinic \u2013 he\u00a0was told he could lose his family doctor for doing so.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, what I’d like to know is, could I just go to a walk-in clinic?\u201d recalled the man, who asked to remain anonymous for this story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was literally told, ‘well, people that do that, there’s the opportunity that they could be de-rostered from the Group Health Centre patient list.’ I was really shocked to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was told to make use of GHC\u2019s same-day clinic \u2013 which takes rostered patients on the same day, if they can secure an appointment by phone, but he says he called for three days and no one answered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo answer, no nothing \u2013 it just kept ringing, ringing, ringing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never got through. I did that for three days and never got anybody picking up the phone on the other end.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s since stopped trying to get immediate care for the issue \u2013 despite his worry there could be something serious that caused it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know why I haven’t done a damn thing? Because whatever is there is broken,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although there\u2019s no longer visible blood in his urine, he\u2019s unsure of what caused it or whether there\u2019s still an ongoing issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m not a physician. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just on pause. Maybe I’m still bleeding somewhere else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Now, the man is disillusioned with Group Health Centre, and he\u2019s worried about what his experience could mean for others dealing with worse health conditions.<\/p>\n
He was told de-rostering for seeking alternative care doesn\u2019t happen on a regular basis \u2013 but that it\u2019s happened before.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce is enough,\u201d he said. \u201cThe alarms for me started going off, more with concern for people that are in far worse off shape than I am.<\/p>\n
Wondering about what he\u2019d been told, the man contacted a local pharmacy and asked whether he could, in fact, be de-rostered for seeking care at a walk-in clinic.<\/p>\n
The pharmacist confirmed that he could be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The man said he felt frustrated with the lengthy wait for a doctor\u2019s appointment and the fact that he could not access the same-day clinic \u2013 or a walk-in clinic \u2013 to be assessed sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wait two weeks or three weeks to get an appointment, if that’s how long it were to take . . . then it’s maybe too far gone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked by SooToday, a Group Health Centre spokesperson said patients are only de-rostered under \u201cexceptional\u201d circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cA decision to de-roster a patient can only be made by the primary care provider and would occur after thoughtful consideration and in exceptional circumstances,\u201d said Ashlee Gerard, manager of communications, planning, and risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen appropriate, we encourage our patients to seek care at GHC first, as we know our patients best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctors are financially penalized through a “reduction in compensation” when patients seek care through non-GHC walk-in clinics, Gerard said.<\/p>\n
“This reduction is part of a provincial policy called ‘negation,’\u00a0which is meant to encourage patients to seek care through their regular primary care team whenever possible,” she said.<\/p>\n
GHC has numerous procedures in place to support patients, Gerard said, including same-day appointments with their family doctors, nurse triage for urgent issues, appointments scheduled within the week \u201cwhen assessed as appropriate,\u201d and its same-day clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen patients face urgent medical concerns, they are directed to the appropriate level of care, such as the emergency department,\u201d Gerard said.<\/p>\n
She encouraged patients to make use of GHC\u2019s patient relations department \u2013 where they can express their experiences and concerns about their care.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeedback from our community is invaluable in helping us improve access and quality of care,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The patient relations department can be reached at (705) 759-5541<\/a> or through the Group Health Centre website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The patient says he tried calling the Group Health Centre walk-in clinic for three days in a row…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,132819,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-294454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-group-health-centre","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}