Access. Quality. Equality. Economy. Those are our four aims in providing health care.
Now that our new offices are open, our multi-disciplinary team (four nurses, three technicians, and one doctor) is working at close to full speed.
This means that we can now see between 350 and 450 patients per week. On paper, this means we should be able to provide quality care to over 5,000 patients. We currently have just over 3,000 and we can usually see patients in 1 to 2 weeks (urgent patients within 1 to 2 days).
So we have opened our doors to new patients again. Some patients have commented that the 'number of spaces left' section is now missing from the website. This is because we've not set an upper limit on the spaces available, but instead will aim to add more staff and doctors to our 'group medical practice' as it grows over the next few years.
This is an aspiration. On paper we can move closer to it. Of course, planning and aspirations are not the same as reality. There is the risk that we will fail before we are fully 'developed' - due to illness, funding problems, etc.. However, as long as our doors stay open, everyone in PEI has access to a family physician. (Although, clearly, many are some distance from us!)
That's a fantastic situation for PEI patients.
We're going to try our best to maintain it.
2 comments:
This sounds great in theory. Just please be sure to plan for the fact that the window of time your own staff will most often want to take their vacation, the 2 months of summer, is also the time that patients will most often need their services, because they are also more active, outdoors, experiencing new foods, airborne allergies, etc. I'd be fascinated to learn if your own data showed a different pattern from that.
Vacation time is going to be our biggest problem over the next year.
I hope to be able to expand the practice by adding extra doctors, but of course the Dept of Health may have other ideas!
Once that happens you can make sure that the doctors don't take time off at the same time.
In the mean time it is my vacation time that will be the biggest issue.
When my technicians are away, we will likely switch to a 'walk in clinic' system to deal with acute problems.
Most chronic problems can wait a couple of weeks (unless they become acute!).
In our Scottish practice we are not allowed to shut our doors, so vacation time must be covered by a locum. There is a large network of locums to provide this service.
Not so easy here.
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