You might find yourself without a family doctor, but that doesn’t mean that you are totally out of luck. The first thing you may want to do is register yourself and your family with the Health Connect Registry in order to be added to the primary care waitlist. When a doctor or nurse practitioner has an opening, they will reach out to individuals who have registered for the Health Connect Registry.
In the mean time, the Comox Valley has two walk-in clinics and one urgent care clinic. If you find yourself in need of a non-emergent visit, you can go to either of the two walk-in clinics, but be prepared to go first thing in the morning so that you can reserve your spot in line. The wait time is incredibly long as the clinics are operating on a first-come-first serve basis and the doctors can only see 100 patients per day. The clinic will take your information and give you an estimated time of when you should return to the clinic.
An alternative to walk-in clinics is Medimap, which is a free online service that is billed to MSP like a regular in-person visit would be. You can see a doctor virtually, via video chat, and get prescriptions sent to your pharmacy of choice if medications are required.
The Walk-In clinics
Comox Valley Medical Clinic Urgent & Walk In Care (Jack Nathan Health) located inside the Courtenay Walmart. They are open Monday to Friday 0830-1630 and Sat/Sun/Holidays from 0900-1400. Phone number: 250-334-1512
Washington Park Medical Clinic is located inside Superstore on Ryan road. The clinic is on the second floor—go left once inside the store and you will find stairs and an elevator that will bring you up to the clinic.
Comox Valley After Hours Urgent Care Clinic opens up after the walk in clinic closes, so is open for same-day appointments after 5:00 pm on weekdays and 9:00 am on weekends and holidays. You must call ahead and make an appointment for this service. Phone number 250-334-9241.
If you are unsure if you need to be seen by a professional in person, you can try calling 811 in BC to talk with a nurse to go over your symptoms. There are telehealth services available as well, including one through Telus — oddly enough, which is covered through MSP.
Another service that I have personally used is Felix, which provides online assessments with doctors or nurse practitioners for common concerns, such as birth control, erectile dysfunction, allergies, migraines, hair loss, herpes, mental health concerns, and acne. I received an acne package after an online assessment, which included prescription medications that were mailed right to my door and directly billed to my pacific blue cross. If you use this link, you can have a free “visit” or assessment. Assessments are usually $40.00.
Lack of Doctors and Covid-19 Restrictions Contribute to Increased Cancer Mortality Rates
Amidst the pandemic, we have suffered a tremendous loss of health care services due to restrictions that were put in place. The pressures from our communities have made it difficult for healthcare and medical providers to continue on at a steady pace. Many doctors are changing their fields of practice, closing their practices, or reducing the number of patients that they can see. There has also been a shift in some practices from in-person visits to telehealth visits. Although this seems like a convenient way to get the healthcare access that we need; it presents issues, such as the inability for doctors or nurse practitioners to fully evaluate a patient, or patients not having the ability to connect to a telehealth visit either due to lack o f appropriate Internet access, or barriers in their knowledge relating to technology.
From the pandemic shutting down necessary services and creating a backlog, this has contributed to adverse health outcomes of people who have not even been affected directly by the Sars-Cov-2 virus. Pair that with the increasing doctor shortages across Canada, we will unfortunately see a dramatic increase in patient mortality related to this. According to an analysis published in Oncology today, urgent referrals for cancer treatment declined significantly, as did the number of patients attending chemotherapy treatments — be it due to clinics closing, fear of the virus, or staffing issues — to name a few. They estimate that the excess deaths of cancer patients to be between 7,165 and 17,910 (Lai, et al., 2020).
With that said, the Comox Valley has found itself with a mass influx of people moving here from all around. The natural beauty of the valley and the supportive community feel makes it a wonderful place to raise a family. It isn’t surprising that during the pandemic, we saw an intense growth in our population. The pandemic allowed many business to switch over to remote work, so more people found themselves working from home. With this, many individuals and families found themselves free to move wherever they would like and continue to make the same pay, so why not move to our beautiful piece of paradise?
Unfortunately, with the influx of new people and the many doctor changeovers that have seen, our medical system is more strained than ever before. This is particularly apparent when it comes to family physicians. We already had seen a high demand for doctors, but now we are officially in a crisis with over 13,500 residents without a family doctor, which would be about 20% of the population.
References
Lai, A. G., Pasea, L., Banerjee, A., Hall, G., Denaxas, S., Chang, W. H., … & Hemingway, H. (2020). Estimated impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer services and excess 1-year mortality in people with cancer and multimorbidity: near real-time data on cancer care, cancer deaths and a population-based cohort study. BMJ open, 10(11), e043828. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/11/e043828
