I wish my health care was as good as my dog’s….

NL Health Matters by Mardi Collins

Mardi Collins

Pet owners will tell you they take their old pet into the Vet clinic and can have examinations, x-rays, ultrasound and lab work done while they wait. Drugs will be provided so that everything is accomplished in one visit. If vets can do this for our dogs, maybe NL Health can do it for us.

Would you be surprised to know that from Paradise to Holyrood to Bay de Verde there are 75,000 people with no public health clinic like the new ones they’ve opened in St. John’s? The so-called new health Hub on Stavanger was supposed to significantly reduce hospital wait times and it reached capacity in two days. 

I have never heard a positive comment about the Hub from anyone living around Conception Bay. Inadequate staffing seems to be a problem.  It can take days to get an appointment by phone or web, and if not, it will take many hours of waiting to be seen. It will also take days more to get the lab work or diagnostic work done. It is a thoroughly inefficient way to treat patients.

So nobody is satisfied with the “service” from the Hub. But guess what? The recent provincial budget has allocated funding to build another Hub. Surely, we should wait to ensure Hub 1 is operational before embarking on another Hub that may be impossible to staff and operate efficiently.          

What if seven first level clinics were set up to serve the towns of Conception Bay for urgent care illnesses?  They could be located in Carbonear, Holyrood, Conception Bay South and Paradise. Clinics could be set up like a vet clinic and would see patients with common infections, sprains and burns. It could be run by a nurse practitioner and a paramedic, overseen by a teleDoc at the Hub. But they could diagnose and treat such conditions as long as they were not severe. This is because they could do basic lab work, with materials to fix sprains, cuts, burns, and have drugs on hand to treat the most common illnesses.  Detailed doctor information sheets could be provided to each patient to ensure continuity of information from doctor to you.  

The objective would be to fully treat patients who have routine common illnesses. These first level clinics would be much cheaper to build, require only one doctor and would provide one step and done care for many patients, saving them time, travel and money.  

Very sick patients would still be sent to the HUB.  And there, the Teladoc would see them or ensure they were seen by a doctor for further evaluation. Seven first level clinics would treat thousands of minor illnesses each year. This would significantly reduce the load on the Hub so that it could handle more cases that otherwise would go to a hospital emergency room. The cost would be much less that trying to build another Hub.  Patients around the bay would finally get health care in their community and save days of our lives and tanks of gas. 

If we have to wait for new doctors to work in these clinics it will never happen. But if we follow the example of the vets, this will help all of us.

What do you think Conception Bay? Some things are worth fighting for.

Please send your concerns or ideas to mardicollins7@gmail.com