Cascade Medical Centre

1. Patients will not be advised in advance when there is a locum covering for their regular family physician (with exceptions for pap smears and other intimate exams).

 

2. Patients may decline to see the locum for their booked appointment. You will be rebooked for the next available non-urgent appointment available. Please be aware this may cause a delay in your care.

 

3. This policy has been enacted by the physician group after careful consideration. If you have any questions or concerns, please discuss with your family physician. Please be respectful to the front-end staff and the visiting locum when you encounter this situation next.

 

 

Rationale:

 

Our clinic has been experiencing difficulties in recruiting and retaining locum physicians, which then affects our ability to retain our permanent physicians.

 

In the past, a large number of patients have declined seeing our locums, instead preferring to wait to see their regular family doctor when they return. We understand this desire, but unfortunately it leads to a worsening backlog of patients for the family doctor to see when they return from their break; waitlists are longer, patients are unhappy, and the time off becomes counterproductive.  Patients refusing to see locums also makes the locums less likely to return because they are paid by the visit and are unlikely to return if they can explore more lucrative jobs elsewhere.

 

Having returning locums is a very important part of physician retention and recruitment. Many of the current fulltime physicians working in Princeton were previous locums or medical trainees who visited Princeton. If there are less locums our full time physicians cannot take time off, which leads to burnout and possible loss of these full time physicians.

 

Our locums are fully qualified physicians who have access to the complete medical record created by your family doctor including clinic visit notes, medications, labs results, investigations, ER visits and specialist consults.  A locum can also give your issue “a fresh set of eyes” as they have the benefit of approaching your medical issue anew, possibly picking up on things that have been overlooked or providing different advice which you might find helpful. 

 

 

Thank you for your understanding.