Municipality’s foresight, formidable spirit produces local solution to doctor shortage
About 10 per cent of Nova Scotians remain on the province’s Need a Family Practice Registry, despite significant dents in the waiting list in recent months. The picture is surprisingly different for the 8,000 or so people who live in the Municipality of Clare, where everyone will soon have a family doctor.
Making health care a priority
Yvon LeBlanc, warden for the Municipality of Clare, describes this as a remarkable achievement. “Council made health care a priority back in 2004,” he says. “They saw the need to recruit and retain physicians, and the municipality set about funding and staffing a $4-million, state-of- the-art health-care centre.”
The Clare Health Centre opened in 2008 with four doctors. The municipality owns and operates the building and physicians lease space as tenants. The municipality also handles staffing for the centre, including a role for a patient attendant who oversees patients as they arrive— a process further streamlined by having two waiting rooms attached to every doctor’s office.
A system that works on many levels
“The way it’s set up is the biggest driver of our success,” says LeBlanc. “Each doctor has an individual practice within a collaborative clinic and new doctors have the support of peers with more experience. The other advantage to this system is that doctors don’t have to concern themselves with the day-to-day running of the building. It takes the stress out of having a practice and lets our doctors focus on what they do best.”
Scalable growth
The centre’s initial complement of doctors has grown to six and will soon rise to 12, with the completion of an 8,000-square-foot expansion funded by the municipality at a cost of more than $7 million. Additional space on the ground floor will provide five new medical offices, administrative offices, a second procedure room, a staff break room, and a classroom for educating medical practitioners. Ongoing construction at the basement level will create more offices, a suite for physiotherapy and additional space for existing and new public health clinics.
LeBlanc describes the expansion as a partnership with Nova Scotia Health, which provides monthly operating grants of $64,000. This support will allow the centre to include services for areas beyond Clare. “We had to close our borders at one point to relieve the pressure on our doctors,” says LeBlanc. “The expansion will take care of everyone in Clare and let us extend our service area to include Digby County.”
State-of-the-art medical equipment
Essential support also comes from the Clare Health Centre Foundation (CHCF), a volunteer, not-for-profit organization that has been actively working since 2008 to raise funds and purchase new and replacement medical equipment. “Thanks to the generosity of our community, we have been able to buy equipment that is not normally found in a regular medical office,” says Wayne Gaudet, CHCF chairperson.
Gaudet is happy to itemize some of the foundation’s purchases, including an $18,000 ultrasonic bladder scanner, a $10,000 slit lamp for visualizing eye injuries, a $15,000 video-conferencing tele-health unit, a $12,000 TruBP blood pressure machine that records multiple readings over a brief period, and a combination defibrillator and ECG (electrocardiogram) machine, purchased for $25,000 to identify heart conditions and rhythm disturbances.
Funds for these life-changing purchases come from generous benefactors as well as the proceeds from two annual events: the Spring Into Action Exercise Challenge and the Belliveau Motors Golf Tournament. “The golf tournament is our major fundraiser,” says Gaudet. “Last summer it raised more than $60,000.”
Return on investment
Gaudet has ample evidence that the foundation’s investment in medical equipment enhances services and enables doctors to deliver high-quality medical care. The bladder scanner alone has eliminated the need for Clare residents to travel to larger centres — either Yarmouth or Kentville — for a diagnosis and the slit lamp makes it possible for an injured worker to receive quick medical attention and return to work the same day.
“It takes the community to build and support the Clare Health Centre,” notes Warden LeBlanc. “We have a good relationship with our doctors and they know we are there to support them. We ask them what would make their day run more smoothly and then we try to supply that.”
Modelling strategies for success
Optimizing the contributions of health professionals is one of the retention strategies offered in a recent memo from the Canadian Medical Association. The memo’s other prescriptions for improving access to medical care and patient outcomes include implementing team-based health care as the main model of primary care; investing in virtual care; eliminating time-consuming and repetitive administrative tasks; and optimizing the use of evolving technologies. These common-sense strategies have been modelled successfully in the Municipality of Clare since 2008, observers say.
“People are the most important element of the health ecosystem,” says Dr. Joss Reimer, president of the Canadian Medical Association. “Supporting, retaining and investing in health-care workers and helping them thrive at work is crucial to delivering quality care for Canadians. We cannot afford to lose more caregivers.”
With six million Canadians currently looking for a family doctor, it’s a sentiment that resonates across the country, but it wasn’t top of mind 20 years ago. The Clare Health Centre exists because of the hard work and foresight of local physicians, counsellors, volunteers, municipal staff, Nova Scotia Health, the Clare Health Foundation, and Université Sainte-Anne. It thrives because of the generosity and support of the Clare community.
For more information on the development of the Clare Health Centre, consult their website www.clarenovascotia.com/en/citizens/clare-health-centre or contact Clare Warden Yvon LeBlanc at district8@munclare.ca
