Private clinic forced to close on Peguis

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This article was published 10/07/2010 (5747 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A privately run medical clinic on Manitoba’s largest First Nation shut down this week in a jurisdictional feud with federal health officials.

The Four Rivers Medical Group closed its medical clinic and pharmacy at Peguis First Nation on Monday after nearby Percy E. Moore Hospital refused to process lab or X-ray services for patients seen by the clinic in Peguis Mall, Four River director of aboriginal health-care Dennis Meeches said Friday.

He said the clinic, which opened more than a year ago, served the community well with three physicians. However, because of the inability to get lab tests and X-rays done quickly, the clinic had no choice but to close.

“I don’t understand the reasons behind it,” Meeches said. “The status quo isn’t working on First Nations. You would think that a corporate citizen coming in to offer this service would be approved. This would have been a model to follow.”

Meeches said the refusal to run lab tests for blood, urine, and swab samples appears to have been ordered by Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Health Branch. Regional director Jim Wolfe was unavailable.

Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson was to meet with Wolfe this week in attempt to resolve the situation. Hudson was also unavailable.

In a Facebook posting on the clinic’s closure, Four Rivers owner Daren Jorgenson said the impasse is over a private clinic operating on a reserve. “In my opinion, they do not want independent health-care offered by fee-for-service doctors, pharmacists, etc. being freely available to First Nation communities and would prefer to control what you get so they can control their costs.”

Peguis resident Josephine Flett said she will miss the private clinic and pharmacy because it is more conveniently located than the hospital at Hodgson. The service at the clinic was also faster, as she could see a doctor in a matter of minutes instead of waiting as many as five hours at the hospital.

“It’s very much needed,” Flett, 65, said at the Canad Inns Hotel on Regent Avenue, where she and many other Peguis residents have been forced to live this week because access roads have been washed out due to flooding or their homes have been contaminated by sewage.

— With files from Larry Kusch

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca