New Ontario Polyclinic To Offer Tertiary Health Services

Ontario, Canada (AHN) - A new polyclinic would soon open in Eastern Ontario offering tertiary health care services. Among its offerings are day surgery, a magnetic resonance imaging unit, mental health services and limited cancer services.

Dr. Robert Cushman, chief executive officer of the soon-to-open Champlain Local Health Integrated Network, told the Ottawa Sun, "For the patients, it's fantastic because it's really one-stop shopping." The health center would use the British model of health care, with family health as the primary focus and specialty services as secondary focus.

Cushman pointed out community medical facilities normally offer only primary health services, but the CLHIN would make available services usually found in tertiary hospitals like colonoscopies. "People wouldn't have to hopscotch around where you see your doctor and go somewhere else for your lab work and go a third place for your x-ray and a fourth place for your physiotherapy," Cushman told the Ottawa Sun.

The CLHIN's opening would make up for shorter operating hours announced recently by the Orleans Urgent Care Center due to physician shortage.

Cushman added, quoted by the Ottawa Sun, "In this day and age, we're doing dialysis and MRIs in strip malls... What we're seeing over time is that the technology is getting so light, we could probably have more of these polyclinics and fewer hospitals and get services closer to where people live."

The opening of the one-stop medical polyclinic comes on the heels of a call from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce for more hospitals to be build through public-private partnerships.