Twenty-four Alberta communities will be home to a new primary care initiative called family care clinics, as announced by the provincial government last week.
The clinics are set to provide non-emergency health care and be a one-stop shop to a network of health-care professionals and range of services such as screening, chronic disease prevention and links to community agencies.
Government officials said the care clinics will complement the services provided by 40 primary care networks (PCN) in the province. The not-for-profit groups of family physicians and nurse practitioners, dietitians and pharmacists, operate either out of a single clinic or multiple clinics in a geographic area.
Family care clinics will act in a similar fashion, tailoring primary care services to the needs of the people in the area and enabling greater access to health-care providers, which may not necessarily be doctors.
“This is a new way of doing things, this is a new approach to health care,” said Premier Alison Redford. “This is something entirely different than what we are seeing anywhere in the country.”
Some critics warn that family care clinics are a duplication of services already available through PCNs.
“Realistically there is no difference,” said Dr. Darryl LaBuick, president of the St. Albert and Sturgeon Primary Care Network.
“It was kind of born and developed in isolation. There was no level of collaboration by the premier with professional groups like physicians or nurses or anybody as to how this would roll out.”
A seven-year doctor compensation agreement between the Alberta government and the Alberta Medical Association was reached only days before the announcement of the family clinics.
The agreement stated there is a commitment for Alberta Health and the medical association to continue to work together on how primary care evolves in the future.
“The government wants to run (family care clinics) without physicians,” said LaBuick, adding he thinks it would have been more logical to increase the funding to existing PCNs to match the objectives the government has put forth with the family care clinics.
The province has budgeted $50 million this year to roll out these clinics across the province – 140 clinics were promised in last year’s election.
Health Minister Fred Horne said some care clinics will be up and running by the fall of 2013, but was unclear when and how many are expected to open.
St. Albert isn’t one of the designated communities to receive a family care clinic, but residents do have access to family physicians through private clinics and those that are members of the local PCN.
Currently there are 57 family physicians practising in St. Albert – not including part-time or temporary (locum) physicians – and only two practices, the Kingsridge Medical Clinic and the Tudor Glen Medical Clinic are accepting new patients.
With the population of St. Albert growing, and thus the need for family doctors, the city has several new medical facilities in the works, such as St. Albert Crossing and the Sturgeon Medical Arts Centre.
But adequate space isn’t the only issue, noted LaBuick.
He acknowledged problems with both physician attraction and retention in St. Albert with the changing demographic of family doctors and the high cost of setting up or taking over a practice in the community.
“By just building and building, it does not necessarily mean that physicians will come,” he said.
