Brandon Clinic ending walk-in services

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This article was published 24/06/2023 (940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Clinic will no longer offer walk-in services as of July 4 because of a severe shortage of family physicians, according to the clinic’s chief operating officer.

Walk-in services have been offered at the Brandon Clinic since March 2022, providing patients with a doctor appointment, diagnostic services like X-ray and lab tests, and additional nursing support.

A shortage of physicians and burnout because of heavy workloads are to blame for the walk-in clinic closure, said Darcy Bell, chief executive officer of the Brandon Clinic.

“It’s not something we’re thrilled about by any means,” said Bell. “We always prided ourselves on being a full-service clinic, you know, 62 years of it. We feel for our patients, but there are things that we just can’t keep up with — with this level of physicians.”

There has been a slow progression of doctors leaving the clinic, said Bell, who added that about five years ago they had a wave of retirements, but just before the COVID-19 pandemic they had “clawed back to normal levels.”

“We had two retirements announced unexpectedly two and a half months ago, so we’ll be down to 31 physicians compared to pre-pandemic, when we were breaking 40,” Bell said.

In addition to a full patient load, Brandon Clinic physicians take shifts at the Brandon Regional Health Centre (BRHC), visit long-term care facilities, travel clinics, and have public health and on-call duties, said Bell.

Because physicians see their own patients as well as those at the walk-in clinic, there are no statistics of how many walk-ins there are in a day, but Bell added it would “easily be 60 to 70 patients a day.”

“Physician burnout is very much a real frustration,” said Bell.

“My most immediate threat is retention, keeping everybody healthy and able to work because losing any more physicians would be pretty catastrophic for the region.”

The Brandon Clinic does not receive any government funding from the province or from Prairie Mountain Health (PMH).

All the staff, supplies and operation costs are paid for by the clinic physicians. And with less doctors contributing to the bottom line, the decision was made to lay off five full-time nurses, one casual nurse and one person responsible for transcription, as the Sun reported on June 3.

Donna Klemick has worked for the Brandon Clinic for 16 years and was one of the seven employees given layoff notices. She said she is concerned about communities outside Brandon that have already lost their doctors and emergency rooms.

“The government needs to do a better job at attracting and retaining our doctors and health-care workers, because when our walk-in closes July 4, the other walk-ins are going to become overwhelmed,” said Klemick, who is president of CUPE Local 2096, which represents 44 health-care workers.

Newmount Medical Clinic on 18th Street in Brandon is open seven days a week, but about six months ago the clinic cut back its hours and now closes at 6 p.m. instead of 8 p.m., said Dr. Harjit Benning, president of Benning Medical Corporation, which he operates with his son, Dr. Rupal Benning.

Benning said he was “shell-shocked” to learn that the walk-in at Brandon Clinic will be closing and added the other clinics will be “swamped.”

“We see new patients every day at our clinic. So, yes, all the other clinics will be flooded, but my son and I will do the best we can for the community,” Benning said.

Manitoba has one of the lowest number of physicians per capita in the country, and it would take more than 400 doctors to reach the Canadian average, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

More than half of Manitoba physicians (55 per cent) are experiencing high levels of burnout, a Doctors Manitoba spokesperson told the Sun.

And two-thirds of clinic owners are worried about keeping their clinic open in the next three years if nothing changes, according to the 2023 Doctors Manitoba annual physician survey.

In April 2023, Manitoba Health Minister Audrey Gordon announced her government was seeking a recruiting firm to help find 150 doctors for health regions across Manitoba.

While the province had no new information whether a recruiter has been hired, a government spokesperson told the Sun in an email, “We look forward to providing an update on this in the coming weeks.”

A comprehensive approach is needed to retain the physicians in the province, and to make it easier for people to come from other provinces and even other countries to help serve Manitobans, said Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew.

“When we see the lack of attention to doctor recruitment and retention playing out in this latest walk-in clinic closure, not only is it going to impact these patients directly, but it’s going to have a spinoff impact on all the people who need to access emergency care and health care in Brandon and the surrounding communities it serves,” Kinew said.

Since the Brandon Medical Clinic is a private enterprise, PMH is not directly involved in health care-professional recruitment efforts for the clinic, said PMH CEO Brian Schoonbaert.

But Schoonbaert added that “PMH is short an estimated 90 physicians region-wide, and due to the continued national shortage of physicians and other health-care professionals, we are constantly recruiting to address vacancies.”

The impact of the Brandon walk-in clinic not being able to provide primary care services to the populations is frightening, said Thomas Linner, provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition.

Linner suggested it might be time to bring privately run walk-in clinics into the public system so that patients have access to the primary care that they need.

“One of the things that absolutely needs to be on the table is the government taking over operation of those clinics to ensure that they are stabilized, and that they are able to be put on a steady path forward to providing the services without having this fear that they are going to shut down,” said Linner.

The decision to close the walk-in clinic is reversible, said Bell, if enough doctors were recruited to the region.

“Our clinic alone could take 10 family physicians,” said Bell. “And I know Western Medical Clinic could take more family physicians, and the number of unattached patients in PMH would justify a larger number than that.”

“So absolutely, it’s reversible, but where do you come up with those numbers?”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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