That is what I heard in the doctor’s lounge recently. I don’t agree. I feel the more allied health professionals do for Canadian patients the better it is for everyone.
One of the biggest problems we have in our healthcare system is lack of competition. We have very good care for free at point of service, but too often patients have to wait in the ER for hours, worrying and in pain.
If the patient has a family doctor they may have trouble getting through on the phone. If they get through they often can’t get an appointment for days.
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If they see their family doctor they can’t get an MRI or CT scan for months. They also can’t get in to see a specialist for months.
It’s like having a great restaurant with free food—there will be a lineup. The only thing that can improve this is competition.
Remember Air Canada before WestJet? Remember the post office before FedEx or e-mail?
I was in Palm Springs, Calif., for a wedding last fall and went into a pharmacy. You could immediately get any immunization for children or adults. You could get a flu shot for US$35. I get paid C$8 to give one.
You could get your cholesterol and blood sugar done for a price, too.
I think that pharmacists in Canada should do this too. They already administer flu shots and provide the morning-after pill. They also do blood pressure checks, which are a huge help to me. I get a lot of patients who first discover this silent killer at the drugstore.
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I get patients to do their blood pressure checks and call them in to my secretary to avoid having to come into my office and risk catching a bug, or paying $50 to have a 24-hour BP monitor.
Until doctors want to be in their offices the morning after (Sunday, Boxing Day or New Years Day, etc.), they should not complain that pharmacists are eating their lunch.
There is enough work for all of us and we need to give better service to our patients. That means free parking, good hours and being on time with open phone lines.
My Family Health Organization of 17 doctors and 28,000 patients offers instant walk-in service Monday to Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on top of office appointments from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. We also offer a Saturday morning walk-in from 9 a.m. until noon.
We have a nurse on call for free 24/7/365, with great advice backed up by computer algorithms, while we 17 doctors are sharing on-call.
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We can do this and not burn out as we are only on one evening a month. I take off the afternoon before the evening walk-in so as not to exhaust my 68-year-old body.
We are on duty for the walk-in clinic Saturday morning and on-call over the weekend to back up the nurse only one weekend in 17, so we don’t stress ourselves out.
The nurse can give advice in all Ontario’s many languages of the world.
All this is at no cost to the patient, except when they are paying taxes.
What do you think? Should pharmacists be able to do more? What are the pros and cons? Who will pay? How do we co-ordinate this?
My suggestion is that if pharmacists do any of the above they can fax a report and your secretary can scan it into your electronic medical chart for the patient (e.g., cholesterol is this value).
This story originally appeared on our sister site, CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca