The Bayview Medical Clinic in Belleville, Ont., is ideally located in a building with a pharmacy and is just across the street from Belleville general hospital. The after-hours clinic is open when many other clinics and practices aren’t such as nights, weekends and holidays.
Bayview has been serving the community since 1991 but after Saturday that all comes to an end, when the centre closes its doors for good.
Dr. James Dolan says that at the height of its operation, the clinic would see to the needs of anywhere from 800 to 1,200 patients a month — easing the strain on emergency rooms in the region.
“We opened to basically serve this need in the community.”
Belleville Coun. Garnet Thompson is worried about his constituents’ access to timely primary care.
“Because they’ll all end up at the emergency; we don’t want that. We’re hoping that there’ll be some dialogue among doctors among the clinic itself to see if there’s some other way that we can get this back open,” Thompson said.
There used to be 10 physicians at the clinic, but that has now dwindled to two. Dolan says recruiting new doctors is at the heart of the issue, and he says doctor’s fees haven’t kept up to inflation and other rising operating costs.
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“In the past five years or so we’ve put about $200,000 of our own money just to keep it open”
It’s a tale that is becoming far too common.
Family practices in both Sharbot Lake and Verona have spent years trying to recruit family physicians and it was only in the last few months that Mallorytown lost its virtual clinic and a practice closed in Kingston because six doctors retired.
Bay of Quinte MPP Todd Smith says the province has taken a number of steps to address the crisis, like more funding for nurse practitioners.
“Be it a nurse practitioner-led clinic or a family-led health team, like the Prince Edward County family health team, for instance, and working collaboratively with other health care professionals — that’s going to be the model going forward,” Smith said.
Whether a solution is found or not at 83 years old, Dr. Dolan will have to live with one of the most difficult decisions he’s made in his professional career, closing the clinic he started over 30 years years ago.
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