Main Street medical clinic to reopen

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This article was published 15/01/2024 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hundreds of patients left seeking a family doctor after a north Main Street clinic closed its doors may soon have a new local option.

Dr. Shadi Rezazadeh has taken over the lease in the strip mall at 2605 Main St., where the former Rivergrove Medical Centre was located.

Rezazadeh, a physician at the Trucare clinic on McPhillips Street, said she hopes to soon open the doors for patients.

“For now, it’s a walk-in clinic that I’m at,” she said Friday. “The new doctors haven’t started yet. But we are keeping a list of patients we see who want to come to this clinic and we will call them as soon as we have a doctor accepting patients here.

“Already the list is three pages long.”

In November, Rivergrove Medical Centre announced to its patients that because of a scarcity of family physicians it was no longer possible to stay open. As well, Dr. Kevin Saunders, who owned the clinic, was retiring.

A notice on the door at the time said two of the other four doctors at the clinic were moving their practices to Sage Creek Medical Clinic at the far southeast end of the city, while the other two hadn’t decided where to go yet. (It’s not known what they decided.)

Last year, Doctors Manitoba published survey results which showed 51 per cent of the province’s doctors planned to retire, leave the province or reduce their clinic hours sometime in the next three years. It was a jump of eight percentage points from the previous survey in 2022.

Manitoba has 215 physicians per 100,000 residents — second lowest in the country. When it comes to family doctors who practice at medical clinics, the numbers get even worse.

Manitoba has only 111 family physicians per 100,000 residents — lowest in the country and markedly lower than the Canadian average of 124.

Doctors Manitoba has said the province would have to hire 175 more family physicians just to reach the national average. Spokesman Keir Johnson said in that environment, hearing the former Rivergrove clinic is reopening is good news.

“We are encouraged to see interest in reopening a clinic in a neighbourhood that lost their clinic,” Johnson said.

“More broadly, we know that two-thirds of physicians who run a clinic are worried about how to keep it open over the next three years. The three main challenges to keeping clinics open right now are escalating costs, the physician shortage and an inability to bring other qualified health providers into the clinic to better meet patient needs.”

The Doctors Manitoba spokesman said while there’s no shortage of patients, it’s tough to keep a clinic in business when it doesn’t have enough doctors.

“Many clinics are designed for a set number of physicians, but they have vacancies,” he said. “For patients, this means it’s harder to access care, (but) for the clinic, it also means exam rooms and equipment are going unused with no patient visits to help cover the costs.”

The NDP government has promised to help new and current medical clinics become a hub where patients can not only see a doctor but mental health workers, physician’s assistants, social workers, pharmacists and other health professionals.

Thomas Linner, a former director of the Manitoba Health Coalition, said last week: “I hope this clinic is successful… for the simple fact we have such limited primary care availability. I do think we will need more government involvement.”

Linner said he is concerned about physician recruitment with the current model, which has doctors paid per patient seen.

“Doctors want to be doctors, they don’t want to be entrepreneurs,” he said. “They want to treat people.”

Rezazadeh said she hopes to hire two or three doctors by early February, and a couple more in March.

“We have a capacity of five doctors,” she said.

“The need for doctors is here. Patients are already coming here looking for a new doctor because they don’t want to go all the way to Sage Creek or elsewhere.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca