By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Numbers from the first few weeks of Port Hope’s walk-in clinic were shared Tuesday with Northumberland County council’s Community Health Committee – and the number of people who show up each day it is open underlines how badly needed it was.
“Within the first 25 minutes of opening, in most instances, we have reached capacity for that day and have to turn other away,” Northumberland County Manager of Health and Human Services Glenn Dees reported.
Dees was accompanied by Community Health Centres of Northumberland Executive Director Taryn Rennicks for the report on this initiative, currently operating as a one-year pilot project led by Northumberland County and supported by CHCN in the same building in Port Hope.
“It was initially developed through dialogue and finalized by a service agreement,” Dees said.
“The staff involved are exceptionally well qualified and very dedicated to seeing this project come to fruition.”
One example of that commitment was the implementation of a new Electronic Medical Records system.
Rennicks actually negotiated with TELUS Health to procure a collaborative system at a 25% discount, in recognition of the CHCN’s relationship with TELUS and the public-health nature of this initiative.
The clinic opened Aug. 17 with five physicians and five nursing staff to offer what hours such staffing allowed – 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends.
So far, there have been 15 shifts (60 hours in all) with 148 patients. Of this group, 65% have no family physician.
“We are not turning away those folks, but we are prioritizing unattached people,” Rennicks said.
Of this number, 95% are from Northumberland County. The rest are from such places as Toronto, Vancouver, Sioux Falls and Florida.
There have been coughs and colds, sore throats, urinary tract infections diabetes and related issues, tick bites, back pain and sinusitis.
Dees praised IT support from NC and CHCN staffers Tyler Kempt, AJ Woods and Tammy Kantor.
Committee chair Olena Hankivsky noted that a lot of effort had gone into communicating that this service is for unrostered patients, wondering if some of the rostered ones are recent arrivals whose family physician is a significant distance away.
Rennicks agreed that this was the case. It is understandable, she said, that someone moving from Toronto into an area where there are not enough family physicians would be reluctant to give theirs up.
Given some of the issues being addressed, committee member Brian Ostrander sasid, some patients could as easily seek the services of a pharmacist. He suggested putting up some kind of signage outlining the services that pharmacies are now allowed to provide in a bid to make room for more serious cases.
Good idea, Rennicks agreed, but there is a wrinkle – not every pharmacy offers the same services.
“We need to do a bit of investigation so we can correctly direct people,” she said.
Hankivsky added, from her perspective of working in women’s health, that not every woman is comfortable discussing certain issues with a pharmacist and would much prefer the privacy of a consultation with a doctor.
Committee member Lucas Cleveland noted that Cobourg is the only municipality providing revenue for the project (though revenues come from Port Hope in the form of support from the Rotary Club of Cobourg and the Port Hope and District Health Care Foundation). He wondered if other municipalities might be called upon to help.
“We will have to think about our funding possibilities if this goes beyond the pilot stage, but we are grateful for all the contributions of those who stepped forward when this was just an idea,” Hankivsky said.
Cleveland also mentioned a walk-in clinic soon to open in Cobourg, associated with a local pharmacy. He expressed his hope that both clinics could work collaboratively – though, as Hankivsky pointed out of the Cobourg project, “that clinic does not distinguish between the rostered and unrostered.”
She agreed, however, that the more health resources in the community, the better.
