GUEST EDITORIAL – Opening more walk-in clinics isn’t the answer

Another guest editorial in Jim Harrison’s slot, this one contributed by Simon Mason:

TODAY, APPROXIMATELY 3,500 Kamloops residents/taxpayers will join the other 17 or 27 thousand (depending on who you believe) without a family doctor.

Our health minister believes that solving a “public safety issue”/”human resource management problem” can be solved by brick and mortar by opening more clinics and tells us what a complex issue this is. For the first time since promising us four years ago that everyone will have a family doctor he now tells us that this shortage of family practitioners will get worse because it takes up to 10 years to train a doctor.

As someone who primarily visits a doctor to renew three prescriptions I would much prefer not to waste a family practitioner’s time to renew a prescription and either access a call center to renew them, purchase them out of a pharmaceutical dispensing machine, or better yet have access to a veterinarian since we seem to treat our animals better and in a more humane manner than we do our taxpayers.

There are numerous alternatives that would maintain dignity and respect to those we still expect to pay their MSP premiums, other than put them on an ever growing waiting list, or asking them to go to a walk in clinic at a God-awful hour when they are sick, only to be greeted by a sign that states “FULL we’re sorry, walk in appointments are filled for today.”

Today’s guest editorial, courtesy of Simon Mason of Kamloops.