Fort Erie clinic to ‘meet very critical need’
Primary Care Niagara moving from Niagara Falls
Primary Care Niagara’s upcoming move to Fort Erie from Niagara Falls will have a net positive result for patients, says Dr. Artaj Singh.
Singh said when Primary Care opened a clinic in Niagara Falls 15 years ago, the city was medically underserviced.
That is no longer the case.
“There’s been a lot of good (recruitment) effort and successful effort. When we first opened, we were one of two clinics in the city. Just within 10 minutes of our location, there are now five clinics,” he said.
“Patients have adequate care — there’s all kinds of services and that’s wonderful for Niagara Falls.”
The Fort Erie area, on the other hand, is “probably the most medically underserviced pocket in the whole Niagara peninsula,” said Singh, who is the lead physician at Primary Care Niagara.
He said based on Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care guidelines, Fort Erie should have about 16 to 18 full-time family physicians and, according to surveys, the town has six full time and six part time.
“And it’s not just Fort Erie (proper). You look at adjacent communities — Port Colborne, Welland, southern Niagara Falls, Crystal Beach, Ridgeway, Stevensville, Sherkston. We’re talking about a pocket of about 100,000 people, so people say why Fort Erie? When you look at this pocket of population that is so underserviced, it’s 100,000 people we’re looking to serve.”
Singh said the new Regional Urgent Care Clinic and Family Practice is to open March 4 at Garrison Plaza, at the corner of Garrison
and Thompson roads. Singh and town officials were there Wednesday to provide more details about the new practice.
The state-of-the-art facility will join a cluster of medical services on site, including a full-service pharmacy and medical laboratory; psychology/counselling centre; hearing/audiology clinic and foot clinic.
“We’re going to provide fiveday, extended-hour service. We’ll start off with three full-time equivalent physicians, but we’ll be looking to add more,” said Singh.
“Our focus is not just on acute care, which is very important — that’s the primary thing we do — but we’ve got a huge focus on preventative care.”
He said the facility will offer a weekly women’s health-care clinic and, starting in May, fullservice physiotherapy services.
Singh said because of the cluster of services on site, more specialists are interested in coming on board.
“We have a commitment from a general surgeon who is going to work within our offices and provide consultation services here. I have a commitment from an internist … (who will be) working here every other week, part time. His speciality focus is cardiac care, diabetic care.”
He said Walker Family Cancer Centre is “very interested” in having a part-time oncologist work on site.
Singh said the Fort Erie building, of which he is one of the owners, provides about double the amount of patient-care space as the building at the corner of Valley Way and Drummond Road in Niagara Falls, which Primary Care leases.
For example, he said the Niagara Falls location has four exam rooms, while the Fort Erie site provides space for nine.
Singh said while Primary Care had options to renew the lease in Niagara Falls, “we needed to move and grow.”
He said Primary Care is “busting at the seams” at the Niagara Falls location, while the Fort Erie site offers the capacity and space to expand even further in the future.
Singh said in addition to a bigger facility, he wanted to continue to provide free parking for patients, which is not the case today with medical buildings in Niagara Falls.
He said the Niagara Falls location is to close Feb. 28.
Primary Care will continue to operate its other clinic in Welland.
Since the Town of Fort Erie announced last month that Primary Care will open a clinic in town, The Niagara Falls Review has received comments from Niagara Falls patients concerned what the move will mean for them and others in the city.
Singh said Primary Care physicians have seen “at least threequarters” of the households in Niagara Falls and Welland over the years when it comes to walkin service.
“We’ve got a few thousand who are family-practice patients and I think the vast number of them are communicating quite enthusiastically that they’re going to transfer their care (to Fort Erie) … because we’re making it more convenient for people to get additional care and additional services,” he said.
“Not everybody will. You anticipate that in any kind of move.”
Singh said the Niagara Falls and Welland locations have not just served residents in those two communities.
“We draw patients from Fort Erie, we service people from Port Colborne, St. Catharines. I have some people coming from as far away as Grimsby. Our catchment area is very large and we’re moving within our catchment area.”
This will be a return of sorts to Fort Erie for Singh.
Singh said he was a medical director of Fort Erie Urgent Care, which opened in 2004. He said one of the team physicians, Hugh Mitchell, wanted to make a fulltime commitment in the town and took over the clinic from Singh.
“That clinic continues to thrive and provide patient care here under his name. With that successful experience, the town wanted to talk to us to see if we can re-engage and come back to town. We’re three, four weeks away from opening and we’re starting to get a lot of family-practice applications, requests to join — people are dropping off applications or mailing them to us, so I think we are going to meet a very critical need.”