New clinic a drop in the bucket

Re: “New $3.4M health-care centre for West Shore,” Oct. 27.

While this clinic is well-intended, the Ministry of Health is not listening to local doctors who have the solutions to the primary-care crisis in the West Shore. At this time, none of the doctors in this newly beefed-up clinic will be attaching patients for long-term continuous care. They will be providing only urgent or walk-in care.

We are in the midst of a primary-care crisis, not an urgent-care crisis. It’s not 15,000 people who are unattached in the West Shore. The ministry agreed recently that it was 30,000 in 2016, and is projected to be 43,000 by the end of 2020. The West Shore could fill up 30 family practices yesterday. A new walkin clinic is not even a baby step toward what is needed.

To bring in more GPs who want to attach to patients and look after them over the long term, which is what every patient wants and deserves, the government needs to bring in new incentives, because the current model of independently owned and operated clinics is not sustainable. GPs are quitting in record numbers as a result.

Bringing in urgent-care clinics is a Band-Aid, nothing more. A drop in the bucket.

Come on, Minister of Health Adrian Dix. Be brave. Stop ignoring the facts. Our citizens deserve far better. Vanessa Young, MD Victoria