O’LEARY  – Designating a house physician for Community Hospital should allow for more efficient use of doctors’ time suggests Dr. Richard Wedge, the director of medical programs for the P.E.I. Department of Health.
Wedge said house physicians are employed in many small hospitals across Canada, taking responsibility for the care of all the in-patients.
“In P.E.I., this is a first try at this,” said Wedge, “and it is something the doctors decided on themselves.”
In O’Leary, Dr. Gil Grimes is the house physician, with responsibility for in-patients as well as for the residents in the Margaret Stewart-Ellis long-term care wing.
Although he served as house physician while Community Hospital was the designated flu assessment site for West Prince, Grimes said the position still needs to be discussed at another meeting of the joint medical staff for West Prince before it is formalized. “You want to make sure everybody’s on board,” he admitted.
Wedge said a house physician can handle the care of the 11 to 13 patients that could reasonably be in Community Hospital at one time. “He goes in, sees everybody and then goes about his day.”
It means other doctors can go directly to their clinic without first having to visit patients at the hospital.
“Dr. Grimes will probably end up working an extra hour or so per day, and he’s prepared for that,” said Wedge. He will also continue to do a regular emergency room on-call shift in Alberton.
He said a house physician would be on call around 300 days a year, with other doctors covering for him when he’s not available.
It doesn’t mean the level of care at Community Hospital will change, Grimes noted. “If somebody looks like he’s really sick, we’ll probably send him to Alberton or Summerside.”
Patients who require a doctor in-house, he added, will be in Alberton. “That’s the way the schedule is set.”
Wedge said the house physician role is also being considered for Stewart Memorial Hospital in Tyne Valley but he is unaware of any discussions in that regard for Alberton. “If I was working in Alberton, that’s what I’d be looking at,” he admitted.