A busy walk-in clinic in Lower Sackville, N.S. has been forced to close its doors permanently due to a lack of medical staff.
The Cobequid Community Care Walk-in Clinic Inc. opened its doors in 2008. Doctor Cindy Marshall has helped run the centre since it opened, and says it’s sad it had to come to this.
“I’m working the last weekend shift here and I’m actually pretty teary about it,” said Marshall.” Because we set this up with good faith and we think we do a great job in serving the population, and now it isn’t going to be here after next week.”
On Friday, the walk-in clinic posted a notice saying the clinic will be closed for good after Tuesday, April 30. The notice says the clinic is hoping to reopen in May under new ownership, but no decision has been made yet.
“The clinic sees probably about 20,000 patient encounters in the run of the year, and unfortunately due to the physician shortage in Nova Scotia, we’re looking at having to close the clinic because we don’t have enough people to sustain the clinic function,” said Marshall.
“It’s not good,” said patient Gary Dobbin. “I just went to two other clinics to take my daughter, she has the flu, and I want to see a doctor and I can’t get in anywhere.”
The clinic is run by four doctors who regularly provide care, with a few others who fill-in when needed. In just the past year, three of those doctors have left due to retirement or illness.
Dr. Marshall says they’ve been trying to recruit doctors since October with no success. She says the differential in payment between a walk-in clinic and a family practice is the main reason behind this.
“So we’re not sure where the future of the clinic lies right now,” said Marshall. “We’re hopeful that something will happen to resurrect the clinic but we’re at the point where we can’t manage to staff it and manage our busy family practices at the same time.”
The clinic is located directly in front of the Cobequid Community Health Centre. There is concern that the clinics closure could lead to more patients relying on already-crowded emergency rooms.
“With the issues that are already happening, with people being turned away from the Cobequid Community Health emergency room, this is going to just expand the problem in Sackville/ Beaverbank,” said PC MLA Sackville-Beaverbank, Brad Johns.
“I really don’t think there’s any reason why either Nova Scotia Health Authority or the minister of health, or somebody, hasn’t had an opportunity to look at this and try to address it before this clinic had to close. They certainly had enough opportunity to ahead of time.”
“I have a family doctor here and he’s in Windsor. I phoned his office today to take my daughter there and he’s not there,” said Dobbin. “I’m thinking of moving back to Alberta.”
“We need more family doctors in our area and to do that, we need to recruit them and retain those we have,” said Marshall. “So we’re not seeing a mass exodus with retirement and in order for that to happen the health authority, and the government, and the physicians all need to work together to find adequate solutions for this issue.”
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Allan April.
