N.B. family physician seeks health-care solutions
CTV
A family doctor in Moncton, N.B., who is closing his family practice in a few weeks, is speaking out about challenges within the health-care system.
As Dr. Jocelyn Cormier prepares to close his family practice in the coming weeks, he is focused on two things: seeing as many patients as he can, and looking for solutions to keep his patients off the physician wait list.
"Some of the steps I’ve been doing is I reached out to the minister of health, reached out to our medical director, the RHA, really looking at any new physicians that are starting [to see] if there’s any openness to take on a cluster of patients," Cormier said.
"I’ll be participating in the health link to try and give a certain continuity, to be able to follow some of these patients, but it’s proving to be quite a challenge to get everyone primary care access."
Cormier is taking on a full-time hospital position with Horizon Health Network starting in July. While this is a better fit from a family, scheduling and flexibility point of view, he said it was a difficult decision to make.
The physician has been working as a family doctor in the Moncton area for eight years and has between 1,500 and 1,600 patients. These patients may be added to the list of New Brunswickers without a family doctor.
"I gave maybe some leads, some suggestions, things I thought about as incentives and was quite disappointed to get a copy pasted answer on behalf of the minister’s office," said Cormier.
Cormier has also tried to find a doctor to take over his practice or to take on some of his patients. This has proven challenging, which he said is likely because there is enough support for new doctors right now.
