Barrette opens 26th super clinic in Quebec
Health Minister Gaétan Barrette inaugurated another Montrealarea super clinic Friday, next door to the Jewish General Hospital.
The Herzl Walk-In Centre on Côte-des-Neiges Rd. becomes the ninth such clinic in Montreal — and the 26th in the province — to extend it’s operating hours to seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
As a super clinic, it is equipped to provide medical imaging, blood tests and other diagnostic tests, and offer medical services on a walk-in basis to patients without an appointment, as long as they show up three hours before closing time. It also has an agreement with the Jewish General emergency room to take on some of its patients who show up at the ER with health conditions deemed less urgent.
Barrette said he is on track to fulfilling an election promise made in 2014 to have 50 such clinics open by 2018. While the centre on Côtedes-Neiges brings the number to just over half the promised total, Barrette said he has enough requests on his desk from interested physicians to get the rest open by the end of the year.
Barrette said the super clinics are showing their worth by taking the strain off emergency rooms.
“It’s only the beginning but we’re already seeing positive results,” he said.
“For the first time in history — and it’s never been seen before — there is a reduction in the number of patients presenting to the ER,” Barrette said, even with this year’s poorly performing flu vaccine during an active flu season.
The reduction in traffic is a direct result of the health reforms, he said.
“And that’s because we have the super clinics. And also because family physicians have been transforming the way they practise.”
Barrette said they will be releasing comparative figures showing a decrease in ER usage, but he didn’t have them at the moment.
However, a look at a report issued daily by the province showed on Friday many Montreal hospital emergency rooms were congested. At the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, the occupancy rate was 141 per cent with 72 patients on stretchers in a space meant for 51. At St. Mary ’s, the rate was 168 per cent, with 37 patients on stretchers instead of 22; the Lakeshore was at 152 per cent; and at the Jewish it was 138 per cent with 73 patients instead of 53, including 19 patients who had been there longer than 24 hours.
Meanwhile, compared to CHU Sainte-Justine at 81 per cent capacity, the Montreal Children’s Hospital recorded an occupancy rate of 192 per cent, with 23 children in its ER, which has a capacity for 12 patients on stretchers.
The super clinic’s medical director, Dr. Juan Gardie Suarez, said the Herzl Centre already does 35,000 consultations a year and it will be a challenge to add another 20,000 consultations to the roster.
But by extending its hours the clinic will be providing care to those without a family doctor, Gardie Suarez said.
The area is home to an ethnically diverse population that is mostly new to the country, as more than half are immigrants and a third are refugees, he said, and “many don’t have a family physician.”