Health minister inaugurates super-clinic
The overcrowding issues in the emergency room at Lakeshore General Hospital should ease with the designation of the Groupe de Médecine Familiale (GMF) Stillview and Statcare walk-in as a provincial “super clinic.” Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette officially inaugurated the Pointe-Claire walk-in clinic Thursday as the 13th such super clinic in the Montreal area, and 30th in the province. “This is a very, very significant milestone to me,” Barrette said. “And not only is it a milestone, believe me there will be others we will get to by the end of our term ... this is a very high-volume super clinic. “It’s a Level 3 super clinic. That means that the number of walk-ins that will be allowed to come here will be around 40,000 per year. Forty thousand citizens per year will have access to this clinic. “A super clinic that also has access, as you know, to services 12 hours day, seven days a week, yearround. And also access to services like blood sampling and a different range of tests, but also radiology, including ultrasounds. And even more, although it is not necessary for super clinic to have a MRI, I understand the clinic here does have that. “But the basic radiology tests are available here and will be,” the minister added. The busy Statcare clinic, which has had the super clinic designation since October, will be open longer hours to serve the public. Health services will be available 96 hours per week. The clinic will be open Monday to Friday, from 6:45 a.m. to 9 p.m. On weekends, it will be open from 6:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. The new hours should help ease congestion at Lakeshore General Hospital, located across the street from Stillview, said Eleanor Phelan Mootoosawmy, executive director of GMF Stillview and Statcare clinics. She said opening earlier in the morning will be a boon to parents. “People want to get into the clinic before they take their children to daycare or to work,” she said. “It’s packed in the morning here.” The Stillview health facility also meets other government criteria conditional on designation as a Level 3 super clinic: It offers a minimum of 40,000 consultations per year to patients who are not enrolled in GMF family physicians; allows a patient to have access to a medical consultation the day of a visit, or the next day by telephoning three hours before closing; offers local medical imaging and sampling services; uses a certified electronic medical record; and commits to meeting the “needs of the population in the event of an increase in the demand for services, for example, during periods of influenza activity.” The super clinic designation will also bring more government funding ($160,000) and additional medical personnel, Barrette said. While this year’s flu season has hit hard, leading to overcrowding at the Lakeshore ER, Barrette noted overcrowding often occurs during flu season at many hospitals. Geoff Kelley, the local MNA for the Jacques-Cartier riding, said access to front-line health care is a key concern for his constituents. “Over the years as a member of the National Assembly, one of the big questions is always a question of access,” Kelley said. “Generally speaking, once people get into the system, they are quite satisfied with level of care people receive in Quebec. But it’s a question of access. And that over time — it’s a non-scientific study, but the calls you get in a riding office, one of the things was a question of family doctors, the access to family doctors. “So we can go all the way back to 2003, the original Charest government. He increased the number of people in our medical faculties, but it takes seven years to train a family doctor, 10 years to train a specialist. We’re talking about the numbers this morning, but there are more and more doctors available, which is part of the solution,” he added. Kelley said West Islanders with minor ailments can avoid going to the Lakeshore ER. “If we can get more people here who have a bad chest cold, as I do, or other things that don’t need specialized emergency care in a hospital, but they need to see a doctor ... they probably need to get a prescription, they need something to help them out. “If we can reduce the stress on the Lakeshore’s emergency room, I think are all steps in the right direction.” The Stillview clinic seems to be making a difference, according to figures provided by health officials. Between March 2017 and March 2018, the number of emergency room patients with a stay over 24 hours in the Lakeshore ER fell from 516 to 268, a decrease of 48 per cent.