{"id":188717,"date":"2023-10-23T07:05:40","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=188717"},"modified":"2023-10-23T13:21:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T17:21:57","slug":"this-is-your-best-bet-sackvilles-new-primary-care-clinic-is-starting-small-but-at-least-its-starting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/this-is-your-best-bet-sackvilles-new-primary-care-clinic-is-starting-small-but-at-least-its-starting\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018This is your best bet\u2019 — Sackville\u2019s new primary care clinic is starting small, but at least its starting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new primary care clinic operated by Horizon will grow to operate as a \u2018patient medical home\u2019 serving the region, and eventually providing some after hours care, according to updates by Horizon Health Network managers at a public meeting on October 12 in Sackville.<\/p>\n

About 60 community members gathered to hear updates from the leadership of the Horizon Health Network, about half as many as gathered in July for a similar meeting. Both meetings were organized by MLA Megan Mitton.<\/p>\n

Richard Lemay is Horizon\u2019s director of primary health care for the Moncton area and one of the people spearheading the creation of a new community clinic located in the Tantramar Community Health Centre, a privately owned building across the parking lot from the Sackville Memorial Hospital. Lemay said the clinic opened on September 11, and as of October 6 has seen 154 people, with 163 appointments in total.<\/p>\n

The clinic alternates between opening three days and four days a week, depending on availability of staff. There\u2019s a registered nurse, two administrators, and three physicians working part time in the clinic so far, including Dr. Catherine Johnston, and Dr. Sarah Thomas working virtually.<\/p>\n

Lemay says Horizon has funding for a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and nurse practitioner (NP), plus \u201ca bit of casual support\u201d. He told the meeting Horizon is \u201ctrying to fill those positions at this time,\u201d and said there is also an outstanding posting for a nurse practitioner at the Port Elgin Health Clinic.<\/p>\n

The Horizon website shows a number of generic postings for LPNs and NPs that mention the Sackville area along with a number of other communities, but does not show any Sackville postings for RNs. Lemay told CHMA by email that the jobs are currently going through an internal posting process before they get opened up to candidates outside of collective agreements.<\/p>\n

\u2018What other choices do you have right now?\u2019<\/h2>\n

A number of people in the crowd asked about the relationship between the new Sackville clinic, NB Health Link, and Patient Connect NB.<\/p>\n

Patient Connect NB is the longstanding list of people waiting for a primary care provider, which at one point in 2022 topped 74,000. In an effort to reduce that list, the department of health hired Medavie Health Services to create NB Health Link, a primary care service for people waiting on the Patient Connect list. NB Health Link doles out primary care appointments, but does not assign doctors or nurse practitioners, so people using NB Health Link are still waiting for a permanent primary care home. The two NB Health Link clinics in the Moncton area have over 32,000 people receiving services, with another 7,000 registered and waiting.<\/p>\n

The new Sackville clinic is another initiative, this time by Horizon, intended to become a permanent primary care provider for patients in the area. That means patients have to choose, said Lemay, between staying registered with NB Health Link, or choosing the new Sackville clinic as their primary provider.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ravneet Comstock, chief of family medicine for the Moncton area, responded to one man who was concerned at being asked to choose between the two options. \u201cI think what\u2019s happening here is that you\u2019re just starting to get care [at the Sackville clinic],\u201d said Comstock. \u201cYou\u2019re worried you\u2019re gonna lose it\u2026 But the goal here isn\u2019t short term. Your medical home is now the Tantramar Health Clinic. If you\u2019ve been called, then you call them your doctors going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comstock was matter-of-fact with her advice. \u201cWhat other choices do you have right now?\u201d she asked. \u201cThere isn\u2019t that easy access to care elsewhere. This is your best bet.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Sackville clinic is only an option for a limited number of people in Sackville. Currently the clinic is taking patients that have been referred from the now closed practices of Dr. Catherine Johnston and Dr. Andrea Wall, who submitted lists of the patients they felt had the most need. The same process is underway for patients of nurse practitioner Angela Tower, who up until recently was seeing a roster of patients in Sackville as a Horizon employee. Tower recently took a different position in Horizon, and so her patients will be asked to move into the new Sackville clinic on the same priority basis as those of doctors Wall and Johnston.<\/p>\n

Patients who were orphaned before the Horizon clinic initiative started are not yet eligible for care at the Sackville clinic, and services like eVisit, after-hours clinics, and NB Health link are their only options. But Lemay and Comstock say the long term vision is for a permanent primary care clinic serving anyone in the Sackville area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a work in progress,\u201d Comstock told the crowd. \u201cIf we have this meeting again in six months or so, I hope that we can say we have 1.5 [full time equivalent providers] on a daily basis\u2026 The bigger dream is a medical home where you have all sorts of people working --physicians and RNs and LPNs and a diabetic nurse and a physiotherapist and a mental health nurse\u2026 This seems like a dream but it is something we\u2019re holding on to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemay said Horizon staff were \u201cworking on trying to build a case\u201d for the patient medical home concept which would be ready for Horizon leadership scrutiny in the fall. If approved, the proposal would then go on to government for funding approval.<\/p>\n

Emergency services still a priority, says Melanson<\/h2>\n

The October 12 meeting also touched on the status of services at the Sackville Memorial Hospital. Sackville and Moncton hospital director Christa Wheeler Thorne told the crowd the Emergency Department in Sackville was now 85% staffed, with a few part-time nursing positions left to fill. Wheeler-Thorne said in contrast to the situation for the past few years, \u201cwe are getting a number of applicants on these positions. So that means they want to stay and work here and live here. So that\u2019s very positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horizon interim CEO Margaret Melanson reaffirmed the health network\u2019s goal of bringing back overnight service in the Emergency Department (ED), which currently is open just 8am to 4pm each day. \u201cIt may seem as though that has gone to the side, however it has not,\u201d said Melanson. \u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate that over the past several months, we have been able to recruit sufficient nursing staff for your emergency department. So now, we are at the point of needing to have sustainable physician coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melanson said the focus now was to staff the Sackville ED with physicians from the Moncton hospital, a model currently in place between Saint John and Sussex. Dr. Ross Thomas, retired Sackville physician and member of the Rural Health Action Group, said new primary care doctors coming into the system no longer wanted to work ED shifts, and emergency specialists wanted to be located at major trauma centres. That makes smaller hospital EDs like Sackville\u2019s hard to staff. Thomas said, \u201cwe\u2019re trying to convince the Moncton hospital,\u201d to follow the Saint John-Sussex model, where physicians that work in the bigger city ED would also have to cover shifts in the smaller ED.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard because you can\u2019t tell doctors what to do,\u201d said Thomas. \u201cThey have to be brought along as they come into the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas also noted that the goal of the new Tantramar Health Clinic would be to eventually offer after hours care for non-acute patients.<\/p>\n

A community role in health care?<\/h2>\n
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Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton at the first Future of Our Healthcare meeting on July 18, 2023. Photo: Erica Butler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Melanson promised the crowd that she and her colleagues would be back again to update and engage the community about how things are going, and MLA Megan Mitton committed to hosting another meeting, this time with an additional invite extended to Medavie, who now run both Ambulance NB and NB Health Link.<\/p>\n

Both Mitton and Thomas expressed a need for some sort of formalized community role in the future. Mitton pointed to the trend towards centralized decision making in New Brunswick health care. \u201cAnd that has created problems,\u201d said the MLA. \u201cWe need local decision making. And I think we need some of that decision making to be from elected officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a community engagement model,\u201d said Melanson in response to a question from CHMA about the possibility for future local control over both primary and hospital care. \u201cWe\u2019re probably most established here in Sackville, but we\u2019re introducing this as well in other communities,\u201d said Melanson. \u201cI can commit to you that this engagement is not something that\u2019s temporary or to be curtailed. This is something that\u2019s here to stay, it may evolve as time progresses, however, I can commit to you that we will always be open to hear your voice, to have that dialogue and to have the conversations about what you believe is working well, what you believe we should be expanding and doing differently.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new primary care clinic operated by Horizon will grow to operate as a \u2018patient medical home\u2019 serving the region, and eventually providing some after hours care, according to updates by Horizon Health Network managers at a public meeting on October 12 in Sackville. About 60 community members gathered to hear updates from the leadership…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":188719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[223],"tags":[24844,18177,8094,16104,4273,31759,16971,31758,31757,31760,20501],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188815,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188717\/revisions\/188815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188717"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=188717"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=188717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}