Dear Patients of the Chase Medical Clinic

This letter has been sent to all patients of the Chase Medical clinic. On behalf of the Chase medical community, we want to share some information regarding the current state of our local medical clinic, which is not unique to our town, but shared amongst most communities across the province and country. In the last two years, having lost two physicians, as well as our nurse practitioner temporarily, we have been stretched thin. The three remaining doctors, along with our staff, which now serve a patient population of 6366 people, have put in extra time and efforts to try and compensate for our shortage. We are seeing more patients per hour, working through lunch breaks, on weekends, and taking less time off work. Despite our efforts, we find ourselves struggling to keep up, which has led to longer wait times for both in person and telephone appointments. We are now looking at wait times of 3-4 weeks to get appointments, and we don’t anticipate this changing anytime soon. We don’t often directly communicate with you this way, however we are approaching a point where both physicians and staff are experiencing burn out which could lead to further staff and physician shortages. We are also experiencing significantly more agitation and frustration expressed from the community. To help prevent this, we have a few suggestions you can do to help:

• Anticipate the long wait times. Book far in advance for predictable items such as prescription refills or reviewing chronic issues. It is no longer reasonable to get fit in for refills within the week. Although refills may seem simple, they are when the physician takes the time to review all medications to ensure they are appropriate, lab work is up to date, conditions are well managed, etc. This is why they require an appointment. Thankfully, pharmacists are able to do some prescription refills (long term, stable medications) for up to 3 months. If you find yourself in the position needing a refill sooner than you can get an appointment, discuss with your local pharmacist first before calling our staff to ask for appointments within the week.

• Don’t assume physicians know you need a refill at appointments. We are noticing a trend of patients expecting us to know you need refills without actually telling us. This leads to frustration on both parties and extra phone calls after the appointment with staff.

• In all instances, refrain from verbally abusing our staff. The vast majority of the agitation expressed from patients is not a result of staff error and there is little to gain from this approach, apart from potentially losing more staff members and your provider as well, feeding into the underlying problem we face. Much of the frustration seen from patients is related to the medical crisis we are in (such as long wait times), and for that we empathize. We don’t have an easy solution to this problem right now.

• We request that you do not make multiple phone calls on the same day. This ties up the phone system. Please ensure you are calling the correct phone number for our office 250-679-1420 (not to be confused with the Health Centre’s phone number 250-679-1400). Please note that providers will do their best to call patients for appointments on time, but due to the high demand for appointments and provider’s covering the Emergency Room in Chase it may be that they are hours later calling you than planned. Please just keep your phone with you and be patient. The provider will call you when they can.

• We are making efforts to reduce direct messaging to physicians from patients(through our staff). These days, physicians typically receive several messages from patients every day expecting physicians to call them the same day. At baseline, physicians are working and seeing patients from 8am4pm, then have 2 hours of paperwork to complete afterwards. To expect us to return phone calls on top of this is unreasonable, so please don’t expect that every message sent to physicians will be returned that same day. You will find our staff will start directing you to alternative health care options if urgent, or booking appointments more often for these reasons. We are not an urgent care clinic.

• Keep your appointments to one issue.

Locums helping out (and even our regular providers seeing patients that are not their own) require extra time to review your chart at each appointment. If you have more than one issue, please book an appointment for each issue. Trying to rush multiple issues into a visit can lead to an extra burden for providers and a lesser quality o f care.

• We have no current ability to take on more patients. We have a wait list in the office but no capacity for new patients. All patients of our clinic (including those of the providers that left are being covered to the best of our ability. When we get a new provider, existing patients will be first to be assigned to the new provider before we take in new patients from the wait-list.

We understand the limited access to care and how frustrating this can be. We want to ensure we have a sustainable model here in Chase to help recruit new physicians and staff. We are and have been working on our team and recruitment. Thank you for taking the time to hear our thoughts.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Robinson

Dr Cornel Barnard

Dr Richard Elloway, Keltine Everett FNP, and Chase Clinic Team Members

Chase Medical Clinic 826 Thompson Ave, Chase, BC 250-679-1420

• For Emergencies call 9-1-1.

• For non-urgent medical information and nurse directions call 8-1-1.

• For adding to provincial wait lists for medical providers call 8-1-1.

• First Nations Virtual Doctor of the Day Ph # 1-855-344-3800.

• Kinetic Energy Virtual Clinic Ph # 250-828-6637, www.kamloopskineticenergy.com

• Urgent Primary Care Clinic Kamloops Ph # 250-314-2256

• Virtual Clinic (BC, Alberta, Ontario pts) virtual@virtualclinics.ca

• Kleo’s Medicine online@imedicinecnada.ca