Clinic pays attention to newcomers’ health
AccessPoint provides service despite 3-month waiting period for OHIP
If public health care has a front line, it probably looks something like the AccessPoint clinic on Jane St. Sandwiched between a hydro corridor and a dense stand of aging apartment blocks, it’s one of three Access Alliance facilities across Toronto, designed to serve refugees, recent immigrants and other communities that slip through the cracks of the public health system.
In an office overlooking some noisy road construction, three nurses based at the clinic talk about the challenges they face at AccessPoint providing health care to people who often aren’t aware they can get medical assistance.
“Recognizing that it’s hard for someone who actually has OHIP to find a family doctor in this day and age,” says Julia Murphy, acting manager for nursing and primary care initiatives at the clinic, “it’s absolutely crucial for people who might not know where to go, where to find a provider, who might not know that they’re eligible for a service through community health centres.”
The nurses at AccessPoint on Jane St. work with programs, such as a walk-in clinic for uninsured immigrants, and Health With Dignity, which works to help clients navigate the healthcare system and manage their own medications and care when dealing with chronic conditions. As the co-ordinator of the non-insured walk-in clinic, Monika Dalmacio frequently sees the results of years of unattended medical conditions.
“We will have people coming into the non-insured walk-in clinic who have been in Canada for decades and have only just heard from a friend that it existed,” Dalmacio says. “They have advanced diabetes or complications from hypertension and ultimately are going to the hospital because of a stroke. On the other hand we have clients at the clinic who have onset diabetes and we give them education to manage it.”
“Perhaps if the primary care option wasn’t there in the first place that’s what we’d see down the line when they have to go to the emergency department, have to be admitted to hospital. Maybe instead of costly emergency visits or surgeries, what should be provided is primary health care.”
All three of the nurses talk about the importance of primary care with the patients they see at AccessPoint, and of getting clients into the system as early as possible.
“I try to advocate for the importance of primary health care and getting clients connected early, so that there’s no longterm issues down the line,” says RN Claire Tranter. “It’s a key point in making sure outcomes are better, which saves costs in the future.”
With this in mind, Access Alliance is just one of more than 8,000 organizations who support OHIP For All, an organization that is campaigning to increase the umbrella of healthcare coverage to include recent immigrants and refugees in the vulnerable three-month waiting period before they’re technically eligible for public health care.
Started in 2016, OHIP For All is petitioning government to make health care available for everyone, with the scrapping of the three-month waiting period as a primary goal. Melanie Spence, an RN, is a co-founder of the campaign, and sees clinics like AccessPoint as key to their efforts.
“If you work in health care in this province you are encoun- tering people who don’t have health insurance. It’s a tricky thing to navigate for providers, and it’s a situation for patients that potentially leaves them without getting the care they need or going into huge debt or any other number of consequences.”
At AccessPoint on Jane, Mur- phy puts it more simply.
“We’re all humans, we’re all living in the same spot. We should make sure we all have health care.”