Pregnancy clinic to shut its doors
Thorncliffe Park centre closes due to low demand despite having the highest birth rate in the city
If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
That is what a coalition of community workers and health-care providers in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park is learning the hard way.
A pregnancy clinic, opened in February by Premier Kathleen Wynne to provide better health care to the multicultural neighbourhood, is closing at the end of the month due to low demand.
And yet, the highrise community of about 30,000 has the highest birth rate and the largest proportion of children younger than age 14 in the city.
“Knowing what I know of the area, it’s a headscratcher,” said Carmine Stumpo, vice-president of programs for Toronto East General Hospital, one of the driving forces behind the project.
The bright storefront clinic, located on the main floor of a Leaside Park Dr. condo building, has been operating one afternoon a week on an annual budget of about $100,000. It was expected to serve up to 150 mothers and babies during pregnancy and for six weeks after birth.
But only15 pregnant women have made appointments at the clinic since it opened and just four are receiving ongoing care, Stumpo said.
“It’s a bit disappointing,” he said. “But I think the learning and the evolution of this clinic is going to be incredibly insightful for the community as a whole.”
The hospital has been working closely with the Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office and other partners to bring a fullservice community health centre to the area.
“This was a stand-alone clinic that wasn’t really connected to anything,” said Ahmed Hussein, executive director of the neighbourhood office. “It is proving the point that we need an integrated system of services.”
Hussein, Stumpo and others involved in Health Access Thorncliffe Park will review the initiative, including the clinic’s location, public awareness and referral patterns in the area. They will also investigate whether patients prefer more integrated health-care services.
The group hopes to have some answers by the end of August and “try to give this another run,” Stumpo said.
Area resident Gillian Lashley, 32, one of the clinic’s first patients, is surprised the clinic hasn’t caught on.
“I’m not sure why,” she said this week. “I thought it was amazing. Maybe a lot of people weren’t aware of it.”
Lashley, whose baby is due in mid-September, will continue seeing the clinic’s doctor at the Southeast Toronto Family Health Team offices about four kilometres away.
Similar arrangements have been made for other patients. But Lashley says she will miss the proximity and sense of community she felt at the Thorncliffe Park location.
“It’s kind of sad because I had built a relationship with all the ladies there,” she said.
Other partners of Health Access Thorncliffe Park include the Midwives’ Clinic of East York-Don Mills, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Flemingdon Health Centre and South Riverdale Community Health Centre.