Save province’s only doctorless clinic: petition
Quebec’s federation of nurses and opposition parties will demand at a news conference Tuesday morning that Health Minister Gaétan Barrette ensure longterm funding for a doctorless clinic in Quebec City, while also thinking of ways he could make such clinics sprout in the rest of the province.
The clinic — called Service à bas seuil d’accessibilité — which helps 1,500 underprivileged people in the neighbourhood of St-Roch in Quebec City, is a pilot-project now funded by the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ). It will cease operations May 1 if nothing is done, but keep a bare-bones service for hepatitis C patients.
A petition to save the clinic has now collected more than 2,400 signatures.
The FIQ will be accompanied by MNAs from the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire.
The nurses’ federation has invested $300,000 in the clinic since October 2014, and Caisses Desjardins, $50,000, but money has run out. “The FIQ cannot replace the health department,” argued federation spokesperson Manuel Dionne. “It’s up to the province to fund health-care establishments.”
In September, a Université de Montréal report found Quebecers would benefit from having more clinics without doctors.
Between October 2014 and June 2015, the team of researchers found that 750 patients had visited the St-Roch clinic for a total of 1,700 visits. The clinic’s nurse practitioner (who can assess, diagnose and treat common ailments) was able to deliver complete care in about 80 per cent of the cases, and the most serious cases were transferred over to partnering doctors in nearby clinics, according to the report.
The most recent figures show 1,500 patients have used the clinic since 2014, for a total of 4,088 visits. Maureen Guthrie, a nurse who works at the clinic, said many of her patients don’t have a medicare card. “We had this guy this morning who came in with a big abscess, he won’t go to the emergency room and wait, he has no health insurance card, you know, and if we don’t take care of him he’ll end up being 10 times sicker. So we patched him up this morning and sent him on his way and he’ll be back in two days to make sure everything’s OK,” she said.
“Once you treat them and you establish a good rapport with them, they’ll come back so that’s when we’re able to get them to go get a health insurance card ... we’re like coaches, we coax them into getting back on track.”
The clinic allowed the government to save close to $120,000 a year, wrote head researcher Damien Contandriopoulos in his September report.
A second pilot-project in Chénéville in the Outaouais region never got off the ground because it was blocked by the minister’s office, sources told the Montreal Gazette.
Barrette maintains he cannot fund the clinic unless it is integrated into a regular family medicine group, which clinic co-ordinator Emmanuelle Lapointe has refused, arguing patients would not follow.
“Family medicine groups work really well for 85 per cent of the population. It’s for the other 15 per cent that we need to find solutions,” Isabelle Têtu, the clinic’s nurse practitioner, said, adding the future of health care depends on improved collaboration between nurses and doctors.
“We’re the living proof that it’s difficult, you know. We try to play our role but it’s difficult to be recognized for the role we’re playing and the place we take in the health system,” Guthrie said.