From the age of 9, Lorrie* has suffered from regular migraines. Now 40, she gets the debilitating headaches at least twice a month, and every few months her migraine medication fails. Relief comes in the form of a morphine shot, but it is difficult to obtain. First, she must see a doctor who has access to her medical charts - either her own family physician or a physician at the Medicentre he works out of. "A strange doctor won't take my word for what I want or what I need, so I need someone who can access my file," she says. Otherwise, she could be suspected of narcotics abuse.
After getting her morphine prescription, Lorrie heads to an emergency room in Edmonton or Fort Saskatchewan and waits as long as two hours to have the prescription filled and get the shot (pharmacies or Medicentre doctors can't administer morphine shots). All in all, this means many hours spent sitting, in extreme pain, in various waiting rooms. "At the point in time when I go to the Medicentre, I'm already beyond desperate," she says.
Sarah*, a university student, is also struggling to get timely access to quality health care. Early last fall, Sarah found herself undergoing surgery at the Cross Cancer Institute after discovering lumps in her breast. A quick visit to her doctor, who suspected it might be cancer, resulted in immediate referral to a specialist. Her doctor's hunch to investigate revealed that Sarah had benign tumors, called fibroadenoma, and the lumps were removed.
Sarah was happy with the quick diagnosis and relieved that she was able to see her family doctor so quickly. But her doctor left the practice abruptly a few months later and Sarah has joined the ranks of more than 460,000 Albertans who are without a family doctor. She now relies on Medicentres, and questions whether or not her diagnosis would have been so immediate had she not seen a family doctor.
Aside from emergency rooms, "Medicentres are the last net in a whole scheme of medical services," says Dr. Brendan Leier, a clinical ethicist at the University of Alberta's John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre. Medicentres are used by people without family doctors, but also by patients who have regular doctors but can't access them without an appointment, which is often not available for several weeks.
A shortage of Medicentre doctors in Alberta has meant even longer queues and more-limited clinic hours - and, occasionally, sudden closures. Medicentres President Dr. Arif Bhimji says the provincewide shortage of family physicians has affected clinic operations for at least the last five years. "The situation for us is that the shortage continues to be problematic because we're not able to offer services to the public, and the demand for services does remain quite high," he says. "In the past, we didn't have too many difficulties making sure we could operate our clinics from nine in the morning until nine at night. We've had to cut back our hours over the last few years, because we no longer have physicians to fill all of the available shifts." He adds that Edmonton's 15 Medicentres are currently short 25 doctors.
Leier sees big risks in relying on walk-in clinics. For one thing, doctors at Medicentres may not have have a patient's medical history at their disposal. This makes it difficult to diagnose and manage chronic health conditions, such as diabetes.
Post new comment