Need a family doctor? For urgent cases, they're now taking calls through 811

Sarah Duncan thought her daughter's elbow might be broken.

The teenager had been playing volleyball and diving on the hard gym floor. Now the arm was stiff and swollen, but with a strange red mark.

Duncan couldn't check with her family doctor because it was Saturday. She didn't think she needed to visit the emergency, and she generally avoided calling 811 because phone conversations with the nurses had not been helpful in the past.

Still, she tried again and was taken by surprise — they gave her a virtual appointment with a real doctor.

"811 worked out perfectly," she said afterward. "The nurse when we first called 811 and the doctor were incredibly reassuring.… The turnaround was super fast. I would say probably within an hour to an hour and a half, we were completed with the doctor."

Since 2015, Albertans have been able to dial three digits, 8-1-1, to get connected to nurses and some other medical specialists for advice. Then in 2022, Alberta Health Services added family doctors to the roster specifically to help with COVID-19 patients.

Dr. Genelle Dingeldein is the medical director for Health Link. She says that pilot project was successful and helped patients who needed urgent but not emergency care. So it expanded and is now offered to many patients who are told they should see a doctor to check out their symptoms within four to 24 hours.

"It's for those in-between patients," she said, when reached at her home in Grande Prairie.

"People are triaged by our nurses. People who need to go to the emergency room right now or to hang up and call 911 are still given that advice.

"And if you're told you should see a doctor within the next three days, usually people have some options to do that. But four hours, it's difficult to access (help) in that time in the community."

Dingeldein says 88 family and emergency room doctors from across the province have signed up to help. They mostly have other practices and take these shifts on the side, sometimes working from home. At least one doctor is available at all times from 6 a.m to 2 a.m.

The doctors talk with patients by phone or on Zoom, and can order tests or send a prescription to a pharmacy. And starting in November, the visit and findings will go into Connect Care, the province's new patient health tracking system.

Dingeldein says it gives people options, especially if they live in rural areas or have other transportation problems, or if they don't have a family doctor.

For Duncan, when the doctor called to check on her daughter Natalie's elbow, they quickly switched to Zoom so he could see it. He soon decided it was not broken but could be a bug bite.