Thanks, everyone, for having me out today, and my thanks to my clinic doctors and staff.
I met Joy when I started to create a new clinic just outside of Winnipeg. We are a 10-physician clinic just outside the perimeter, only a couple of minutes from East St. Paul, Manitoba. Why did I want to make a clinic there? Well, I live in the neighbourhood, so it was a great idea for a short commute to work, plus I realized that there was little health care in the area. People had to go all the way to Winnipeg even to get blood work and see their doctors. We're on a main artery that comes into the city, so in the morning and evening there's constant traffic coming by our site, and people can stop there and receive their health care needs.
When we started, we wanted to have a very modern clinic. We wanted to make use of all the available technologies and be prepared to use newer technologies. We all understand that technological advances are very helpful for the patients—they improve patient care and efficiency, and they produce better outcomes for the patients. So when we designed our clinic, we had that in mind. When you come into our clinic, it's a reasonably nice-looking clinic. It's fully computerized, fully electronic. We interface with our labs and everything that way. It's very helpful for all of us. We wanted to do that because we wanted to be very progressive in this area.
We have nine family doctors. Actually, we have only eight right now, but the ninth is starting in February 2013. We have one specialist, whose training is in auto-immune and skin diseases. She is also trained in general internal medicine, and she does some private cosmetic stuff. The really nice thing is that in our family practice setting we also have specialist backup, people we can talk to in the hallway for hallway consultations, and formal consultations for our patients. That really improves the stream for the patients. For example, if I have a question, I can go ask our specialist. She might not be able to see the patient at that moment, but she can give me some information on starting a treatment or an investigation that will speed things up when she does see the patient.
One of the other things we wanted was not to, I want to say, be “just” a family practice clinic, but we wanted to work collaboratively at our clinic. If I have a question about something, I can ask one of the other family doctors down the hall. So if you are at the clinic, quite often you might see two or three of us going into a patient room to look at a case. Three brains are better than one. Sometimes that will speed things up and maybe reduce unnecessary consultations.
One of the other nice things about our clinic doctors is that many have specialized interests. We all do full-practice family care in the office, but we also have some people who do very specialized care. For example, I do respiratory medicine. I'm on the College of Family Physicians of Canada's Respiratory Medicine Program Committee. So in my clinic, when one of the other doctors has a respiratory patient who might benefit from some of the additional knowledge I have, then I'll see that patient for him. We have one doctor in our clinic right now, and another one starting in February, who does obstetric care. If you want to be at the clinic for the whole time for your obstetric care, then this doctor can take care of you and deliver your baby. And it'll be the same thing with the new doctor who's coming on. If I have obstetric patients of my own, usually we'll see those patients up to about 28 weeks before we pass them on. This reduces the burden on the obstetricians and gynecologists—they don't have to do all the regular prenatal care. But if I need advice or guidance, I can rely on this doctor in our clinic with her advanced knowledge.
Four of our doctors do hospital care as well. They admit patients. They admit unassigned patients to hospital. That also helps with transition. If our clinic patients are in hospital, it's very easy to transition over, which also keeps them in the loop as we try to make changes in the hospital system to improve the flow of patient care.
One of our doctors has an interest in sports medicine. That's also a very helpful thing. We have quite an array of physicians doing full-service family care, but we also have people who, though not specialists, have special interests and some additional training in other areas. Again, that really improves the flow of the clinic.
One of the other things we wanted to do was to make sure that our clinic was accessible. Definitely that's one of the most important things.
Actually, I do have a document here. The college told me they sent it to everybody on the health committee earlier, but if anybody would like this bilingual document called, “The Patient's Medical Home”, you can just let me know and I will have them send it to you. The basic idea behind “The Patient's Medical Home” is that everyone have access to a family doctor in a timely fashion and access to alternative care, for example, after-hours care and things like that.
When we set up our clinic—