Update: new doctor pulls out of coming to PEI

**UPDATE**


Sadly, Dr Rawal has informed us that she has decided not to come to PEI.   We have been talking to her about her move here for over two years, and we are terribly disappointed that she has decided against coming.

This is a terrrible blow to our plans for the medical practice.  We have been working hard over the last few months planning for the expansion of the practice, and we are very disappointed by this news.

It means that we will not be able to provide the level of service to our patients that we would like.  We won't yet be able to provide the extended opening hours that we were planning.   We won't yet be able to stay open during the doctor's vacations.  We won't yet be able to provide the stability and sustainability that comes with a group practice.


We are actively looking for more doctors, and so we are hopeful that this is just a temporary setback.






Original post:


Our goal is to make sure that every patient in PEI has easy access to a family physician.  To do this we plan to keep our doors open to new patients.  Instead of closing our doors, as we register more patients we plan to add more doctors to our medical practice to meet demand.

As part of this plan, we have now appointed our second doctor.  Dr Susan Rawal is a GP (family physician) in England.  She is currently a partner in a medical practice with 21,000 patients.  However, her husband has taken a job as a radiologist at the QEH hospital in Charlottetown and they will be moving to PEI this year with their three young children.  Dr Rawal has kindly asked Health PEI if she can join our practice when she arrives and Health PEI have agreed to this.

The addition of a second doctor will make us a 'group practice'.  This means that all of our patients will have access to both doctors.  Patients will be able to book an appointment with the doctor of their choice.

We plan to continue to add more doctors to the practice as we grow over the next two to three years, and have a capacity in our current premises for up to 4 doctors and 12,000 patients.  We have also been approached about the possibility of opening a branch practice in the future in Prince County to tackle the physician shortage there.

This is fantastic news for the residents of Queens County who have struggled with a shortage of family physicians for so long.  Once up and running our medical practice will have the following advantages:

• A choice of which doctor you see when booking in advance.
• A choice of a female or male doctor depending on your needs.
• A medical practice that is never closed for vacations.
• A new 'Rapid Access Clinic' which will allow patients to see a doctor within 48hours for urgent conditions.
• A planned joint injection clinic.
• Patients will not 'lose' their family physician if one doctor leaves.  Even if one doctor leaves the group practice, the other doctors can carry on until a replacement is found.  This will hopefully mean an end to thousands of patients suddenly finding themselves without a family doctor. 

To do this we need to successfully attract and retain high quality family doctors to PEI over the next two to three years.   Because we are a modern, paperless, medical practice with a team of nurses and doctors working together, it is easier for us to attract doctors to the province:

• We operate the style of medical practice that modern family physicians are used to elsewhere.
• We have already been contacted by several Canadian doctors who have seen us on the internet and are interested in moving to PEI.  
• Our Health Care Technicians will be taking their Canadian exams over the next couple of years and may be able to become physicians within the practice once they obtain Canadian licenses.   
• One of our Health Care Technicians, Shirin Majdi Zadeh, will be leaving us to start her Family Practice intern training in the US in November.   We would be delighted if she chose to return to work with us in three years time when she is a fully qualified family doctor.
• Every month we are visited by doctors and people in health-related fields from around Canada interested in how we have set up our medical practice.

We are delighted to be able to continue our work to improve access to high quality care and I'm sure all our patients will be as excited as we are about Dr Rawal coming to join us in January.