Primary Health Care: Health Link

Minister Fitch announced in the Telegraph Journal on Saturday, October 22, 2022 that “doctorless patients” should register with Health Link.   It is a good interim approach to filling some voids in a primary health care system that is more like Plinko for over sixty thousand New Brunswickers.  If you don’t have a doctor and have an issue, seeing someone with medical training is better than a zoom call and certainly better than seeing no one at all.  It is a step above the after-hours clinics.

But a real reform with intentionality is well overdue for those on the waiting list “for a doctor.”  Speak with these people and you get the most bizarre stories and when I think I have heard them all, I hear another one!

Joe, a senior of about seventy-seven years, with a spouse of the same age, both needing some regular surveillance of issues of aging, thought they were secure; doctor was part of a group and suddenly decided to stop practice.  They assumed they would be assigned to another doctor in the group.  Simple, right?  Wrong, no such assignment made so they enquired about records.  Well, the records can be retrieved from a company in Toronto for a fee.

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