‘We can’t give preferential treatment’
Former Health P.E.I. CEO said in email UPEI staff, families couldn't be first in line to obtain family doctor at on-campus medical home
As of last summer, UPEI suggested that Health P.E.I. put university staff and their families first in line to obtain a family doctor at an oncampus medical home slated to be part of the new faculty of medicine.
In an internal email, obtained by Saltwire, dated July 21, 2023, former Health P.E.I. CEO Dr. Michael Gardam noted this was one of several issues that “keep resurfacing” during negotiations with UPEI over the medical school.
The university had announced months before that a patient medical home, serving 10,000 people, would be located on-campus and would be a teaching facility for medical students.
“I understand from my team that the university is suggesting to preferentially take faculty and families off the registry to be cared for in the clinic,” Gardam wrote in the email.
In the email, addressed to Pamela Williams, chief of staff for Premier Dennis King, and Lisa Thibeau, deputy minister of Health and Wellness, Gardam said the issue of preferential health access for UPEI staff needed to be “put to bed.”
Saltwire obtained this email through a freedom of information request.
In March 2023, UPEI announced the new five-story UPEI faculty of medicine building would house a new patient medical home, a collaborative clinic staffed by doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
But by July 2023, the university had still not signed a formal agreement with Health P.E.I. to operate the medical home.
In his email, Gardam said the agreement should ensure the UPEI medical home functions the same as other facilities in the province.
“We can’t give preferential treatment because of where someone works,” Gardam said in the email.
“There is an expectation that this clinic will be providing true primary care.”
Gardam said if students, faculty and their families were prioritized, this would likely count for almost all of the 10,000 people for whom the medical home would provide primary care.
“It is our opinion that if they need some faculty services, they can set up a clinic in parallel with the UPEI medical home,” Gardam said.
“As above, I feel this needs to be very explicit in our (memorandum of understanding).”
UPEI and Health P.E.I. have still not finalized an agreement over the operation of the UPEI medical home, staff confirmed to Saltwire in a March 19 email.
'MANY SCENARIOS DISCUSSED'
When asked if UPEI had planned, as of July 2023, for the on-campus medical home to give preferential access to university staff, Paul Young, UPEI faculty of medicine chief operating officer, said “no” during a March 12 interview.
Young declined to comment on the claim in Gardam's email that UPEI had suggested this multiple times.
“The intent has always been … to ensuring that we are able to meet the needs of Islanders while being mindful of the current UPEI community," Young said in the interview.
Young said the university is not currently planning to give faculty or staff preferential access to the Health P.e.i.-run medical home.
On March 18, Health P.E.I. communications representative Everton Mclean confirmed there had been suggestions from UPEI that an on-campus medical home would prioritize care for faculty and their families.
Mclean confirmed this is not currently planned.
Despite the denial by Young, a March 19 email from Heather Howatt, UPEI faculty of medicine communications advisor, did not deny that previous suggestions had been made to prioritize primary care access for UPEI staff.
“There were many scenarios discussed in the early stages of dynamic planning as we worked collaboratively with HPEI to ensure we had a model that most appropriately met the needs of the broader community while being considerate of the needs of the UPEI community,” Howatt said.
Howatt also said the oncampus medical home will operate "as all other Health P.E.I. patient medical homes do."
In an email, Margot Rejskind, executive director of the UPEI Faculty Association, said she had not been aware of suggestions of offering preferential access to the medical home for faculty or their families.
"The (faculty association) has certainly never requested anything like that," Rejskind said in a March 14 email.
SUPPORT
In a statement, Sheila Kerry, communications representative for the Medical Association of P.E.I., said the organization supports Health P.E.I.'S current policies for the patient registry.
"At MSPEI, we support patients coming off the patient registry based on medical need and fairness, as per Health PEI'S current policy," Kerry said in a March 14 email.
"Our focus needs to be on increasing additional system capacity and supporting Islanders who do not currently have a primary care provider, or timely access to care."
NO PRFERENTIAL TREATMENT
In the March 12 interview, Young said the university and Health P.E.I. are currently “very well-aligned” on plans to operate a medical home on-campus.
“We certainly don't want a two-tiered health-care system. And we don't want a preferential approach to treating one population different than the other," Young said.
Young said the university’s existing health and wellness clinic will cater specifically to students, faculty and staff. Parallel to this clinic, a new patient medical home, located in the new faculty of medicine building, will be operated by Health P.E.I. and will cater to the general public.
In the same interview, Dr. Preston Smith, dean of the UPEI faculty of medicine, said the discussions referred to in the July 2023 email had happened before he began his role.
He said prioritizing access for faculty, students and their families would have rendered the on-campus medical home a weaker site for teaching medical students.
“If I had been part of the conversation, I would have been saying – well, there's two things I wanted to say. One is that I would have been saying, 'hold it, this has got to be a patient medical home that looks like all the other patient medical homes,’” Smith said.
“We can't be selecting a population for the patient medical home that's got to be a prime teaching site.”