A Three Rivers community group is preparing to open the doors to a new health center in Down East Mall – as local doctors and nurses sign up to work there.
This weekend, the volunteer group is asking people to join them in celebrating the progress made – and raising a few extra dollars – with their Apple a Day fundraiser at Montague Brewery.
“We’ve had great support from many service organizations, businesses and others,” said committee member Theresa Redmond.
“Sunday should be a great opportunity not only to share news about the clinic, but also to give back to the community with fun activities and hopefully have donations to support the clinic in the future.”
There have been calls for a health center in the Kings County community for years, and they’ve only gotten louder with nearly 35,000 names on the county’s patient registry, a list of Islanders waiting to be assigned a family doctor.
Meanwhile, staff shortages have meant frequent restrictions on Kings County Memorial Hospital’s emergency room hours.
About a year ago, the hospital’s foundation decided to create a special volunteer committee to explore the creation of a health center to serve people who do not have access to health care.
Telemedicine episode
The Down East Community Clinic will be ready to open sometime in October, Redmond said.
“We will have a walk-in clinic with doctors or nurses,” she said.
“We’ll have a telemedicine cart with various peripherals, the ability to take pictures, blood pressure, all that stuff that could be uploaded for patients to access Maple.”
Maple is an online virtual health platform used by the PEI Government to help provide care for people until they can be assigned to GPs.
Redmond said the telemedicine component of the clinic will be especially helpful in helping residents access Maple.
“Certainly in Kings County, there’s very poor cell phone coverage, so it’s dropped calls.” [When] people try to get in touch with Maple, they can’t,” she said.
“There is also a segment of the population that is not as comfortable with computers, so they need a little help logging in, registering and explaining their situation to the Maple people.”
‘Fresh and clean and new’
Redmond said the plan is to staff the clinic with health care workers who are working in the Three Rivers area.
“We will be talking to the various doctors and nurses in the area to see who is available to provide part-time services on top of their regular work,” she said. “It’s not uncommon in PEI, but it’s new in this area.”
Health PEI plans to lease half of the space to run an appointment-based clinic, specifically for people without a family doctor or nurse practitioner. A similar model has been operating for some time at the Polyclinic in Charlottetown.
“Early indications are that there will be doctors who will be interested, and also it’s a really nice space, fresh and clean and new,” Redmond said. “I think it will attract people who just want an environment like this to meet the public and provide … needed services in the area.”
Committee member Ray Brow said the mall space is only temporary because there are plans to move the clinic.
“The walk-in portion of the clinic will move to a nearby pharmacy in about nine months,” he said.
“This clinic will likely become part of Health PEI It’s all been designed to Health PEI standards and they have the right of first refusal to take over this space when we leave.
The long-term goal is to have a new hospital in Kings County, Brow said. Plans for it were unveiled at the provincial capital in 2021, with $13.3 million set aside over five years for planning.
“It’s a dream. We know it’s coming, but it’s at the end of this decade and we hope to participate in that process as well,” he said.
“We haven’t had any meetings with Health PEI about what their plans are, so it’s expected that they will involve some members of our group in the planning stages.”
Brow hopes that what the committee was able to accomplish in Three Rivers will inspire other island communities looking to increase access to health care.
“We know that the community around us – and I’m talking about all of eastern PEI, from Stratford to East Point – they’re behind this initiative,” he said.
“You just have to pull together and go for it.”
In a statement to CBC News, Health PEI confirmed it has been working with committee members to develop the Down East Community Clinic space.
“Health PEI’s Primary Care Access Clinic in Montague will move to this site to continue providing in-person appointments to patients without a primary care provider who have been referred from the Unaffiliated Virtual Care (UVC) program through Maple,” the statement said. .
“A multi-site outpatient medical home opened in Montague in the last six months. Montague is slated to have a new community health center and Health PEI has done several rounds of planning to inform the redevelopment of KCMH.”
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