Perhaps you’ve visited the Day Clinic at 26 Hospital Dr. during the summer months when Trent’s Health Services shuts it doors or as an alumnus/alumna without a family doctor.

You call the Day Clinic around 8:30a.m., and pray that they have an opening for that day. Sometimes you receive an automated voice informing you that they’re full up. You repeat the process on your next free day until an appointment is made.

If you’ve needed to visit the Day Clinic on more than one occasion, it’s likely you didn’t see the same physician (at least on consecutive visits). According to the Peterborough Examiner (“Peterborough’s day clinic closes its doors,” Jan. 23, 2016), at one time the Clinic had up to 12 doctors who were seeing 125 patients a day.

In recent years that number dwindled to two rotating physicians due, in part, to new restrictions on opening family practices and retired doctors losing interest in participating part-time at the Clinic.

The Examiner further states that the 20-year-old Clinic operated “on a fee-per-service model,” thus with only two doctors, the Clinic was not able to generate enough income to continue its service.

The Day Clinic “Administration” issued a notice of closure on Jan. 22, 2016. It followed the notice with an Ontario government website to aid you in your search of a family doctor or nurse practitioner.

This Ontario government initiative does not guarantee that they will in fact find you a doctor – roughly 80 per cent of individuals find a doctor this way. Certainly one can look for their own doctor as well, and this is encouraged. |

What the website fails to mention is the time it may take to find a doctor.

According to personal accounts, a six-month wait-time is possible. Given the Day Clinic closure, this wait-time may be longer now that people will be making more use of the service.

You can visit the following site for more details and to register: https://www.ontario.ca/page/find-family-doctor-or-nurse-practitioner.