‘Orphan’ patients placed

Family Physician Dr. Alex Orr (left) and Nurse Elizabeth Jack of Santé Kildare, a Family Medicine Group in Cote Saint-Luc that took on, last fall, 400 new patients who previously had no family doctor.
Family Physician Dr. Alex Orr (left) and Nurse Elizabeth Jack of Santé Kildare, a Family Medicine Group in Cote Saint-Luc that took on, last fall, 400 new patients who previously had no family doctor.

Family Medicine Groups register wait-listed patients

Two days of ‘blitz’ to conquer the waiting lists of patients seeking family doctors succeeded last fall in placing 943 Montrealers within Family Medicine Group (FMG) clinics.

The Queen-Elizabeth, MDCM and Santé Kildare FMGs along with the Hampstead Clinic took in patients who were registered on the Quebec Family Doctor Finder (QFDF).

“This collective achievement by our FMGs has helped us toward our goal of providing a majority of Montrealers with access to a family doctor,” says Julie Simard, a Front-Line Planning, Programming and Research Officer.

“An exemplary effort on the part of Dr. Michael Kalin and his medical team from Santé Kildare resulted in the registration of at least thirty patients with each doctor, for a total of 420 patients,” notes Ms. Simard. A similar participation rate by other CIUSSS West-Central Montreal FMGs, she estimates, would enable an additional 10,107 patients on the QFDF list to register with a GP.

New online resource dedicated to Family Medicine Group clinics

The FMGs were created to improve patient access to medical care within our CIUSSS, and now a website has been created to improve digital access to those clinics, and the services they provide: fmg.ciussswestcentral.ca.

The site offers an introduction to FMGs, describes the role of various team members (such as nurses, social workers, nutritionists and kinesthesiologists), and lists every clinic within the network along with their contact information and a location map.

Montrealers are also guided through the process of finding a family doctor that is accepting new patients in their catchment area.

The new dedicated section is found on the CIUSSS West-Central Montreal internet under Home > Care and services > Family Medicine Group (FMG).