The Editor,
I was told in a phone call from my pharmacist this past weekend that my family doctor is no longer practising medicine and that, as a result, they were not able to fill the prescription that I had phoned in days earlier.
Shocked, I called my doctor’s office and received a voicemail stating that my doctor was off on an extended medical health leave.
Whatever happened to locums? Does a GP not have some responsibility to their patients? I have received no letter in the mail to date or courtesy phone call or email to advise me of this event that is about to affect my life and I am sure many other people’s lives.
I am sure this news came as a huge surprise to some patients but for me this same experience has happened two times previously.
A couple of years ago, my previous family doctor retired from private practice. I found out about her retirement from a voicemail when I called her office to make an appointment. I never received a letter or phone call to advise me of this change, and surely this was not an overnight decision on her part.
Prior to that, I had a family doctor for about a year and a half and she actually just stopped showing up for work one day. When I phoned the clinic for an appointment, that is again how I found out this news.
In all of these cases the doctors will not release your records unless it is to transfer them to another doctor’s office — and they expect to be paid for this service.
In today’s climate of too few family doctors and use of clinics, where are you supposed to transfer your files to? This means that the doctor treating a patient at a walk-in clinic is relying on the patient’s knowledge/memory of their medical history. This does not seem like an ideal situation for anyone.
Upon commiserating with friends, it seems like many people have similar stories or fears of their GP’s upcoming retirement.
It is incomprehensible that there isn’t a national health care database with every patient’s medical information, test results, etc. This could be accessed by any doctor, whether at a walk-in clinic or in private practice and would serve the best interest of doctors and patients.
Our current system is completely lacking in any comprehensive regard for patients’ continuity of care.
Theresa Hendriks, Coquitlam
