Mother applauds AHS after hours clinic
Posted Aug 16, 2011 2:15 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Alberta Health Services says those needing a family doctor can find help just by picking up the phone.
As walk-in clinics and emergency rooms try to deal with the overflow, AHS wants Albertans to know about the Primary Care Network after hours program.
Health Link says their program has been in place since 2005.
The initial problem for patients though, has always been to find after hours care.
Calgarian Patricia Beavers says Health Link helped her daughter. She recently called Health Link after the ten-year-old came down with a severe case of excema. They were referred to the after hours clinic where she was seen by a doctor in less than an hour.
“I’m very impressed. I didn’t know about that part of the service. They actually called me back. They said, ‘We’ll call you back with an appointment,” says Beavers.
Laura Osterreicher with AHS calls the program Alberta’s best kept secret.
“Health Link does an assessment, so a registered nurse will assess the symptoms and if you were determined that you needed to be seen within an hours, a fax referral is sent to the after hours clinic,” says Osterreicher.
She says, in most cases, patients are seeing a family doctor within that hour. She says there is still plenty of capacity.
Dr. Sonya Regehr is a physician with the program and says the problem has been getting the word out about it.
“I think a fair number of people know about Alberta Health Link and then they’re very surprised when they get referred to our program and they just had no idea this existed,” says Regehr.
