Patients and doctors moving into the new medical clinic soon

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

A new medical clinic will be opening on Main Street in early December, however for the time being it won’t be accepting new patients.

Rather, thousands of patients will be relocating to the Harbour South Medical Clinic – the site of the former NSLC location – with their doctors, three of whom have been practicing at the Ocean View Family Practice at the Yarmouth Regional Hospital.

A fourth doctor, Roland Muise, will also be relocating his practice and patients to the clinic, where he will serve as the medical administrator of the clinic.

But for people still looking for a family physician, the new clinic does open up a new option for them. New doctors will eventually be settling into Ocean View to replace the ones moving out and they will be taking on new patients.

This, says Dr. Muise, is the beauty of the new medical clinic, which is a municipal initiative involving the local units and the South West Shore Regional Development Authority.

“It’s going to create a flow for new physicians,” he says. “I can see that it will attract other physicians…and supply more manpower, it’s a real possible future attraction.”

Plus, he points out, the clinic will be set up so that it could accommodate up to eight doctors on site.

“We’re hoping that we could attract new physicians and certainly open it up to more people,” he says.

There will be as little disruption as possible to patient care when it comes time for the doctors to relocate – particularly since the medical records will all be electronic.

People requiring blood tests will still have to go to the hospital for that, although the possibility of having services like this at the clinic may be talked about in the future. As well, there could be talk at some point of whether to accept new patients.

Aside from Dr. Muise, the three doctors at the clinic will be Dr. Neeru Anand, Dr. Suzy Guirguis and Dr. Qasim Sayed. Their patient caseloads range from 800 to 1,000 patients each.

Meanwhile, Dr. Muise does caution people to be aware of what the term ‘clinic’ means.

“That’s one of the things that is going to be deceiving to the public, the word clinic,” he admits. “People are going to conceive it as a walk-in clinic. It’s not a walk-in clinic. It is a clinic that is designed to serve the patients of the doctors in the clinic.”