Hundreds more Londoners out of a doctor after university cracks down on employee patient list

During a province-wide doctor shortage, Western University is cracking down on who can use their employee family clinic.

The clinic is bumping patients off their roster who are not full-time main campus employees, a change they say is due to a limited capacity to treat patients and a growing waitlist. 

Staff at the affiliate King's and Huron colleges, part-time and contract employees, and former post-doctoral scholars are all losing access to the clinic in mid-August, faculty unions told CBC News.

Some people say they are just finding out, faculty unions told CBC News, sometimes when they call to make an appointment. 

"Having the continuity of care of a family doctor is pretty important," said Geoff Read, an associate professor at Huron, who learned about the change through an email sent by the college's faculty association this week.  

Read's family of five has been using the clinic for 16 years, and it's there that his wife received a breast-cancer diagnosis, his daughter receives continuous care for a kidney disease, and he visits regularly to pick up supplies for his type 2 diabetes. 

"Western is a major employer in the London area with a lot of employees, so the fact that it's providing this service to its employees means that those people aren't taking up spots at other family practice clinics," he said. 

The University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA) said 2,500 of the current 4,000 patients on the clinic's roster will lose access to the clinic. Western's communications department did not confirm this number Thursday, despite multiple requests for clarification that were first made in February. 

Spokesperson Stephen Ledgley said Thursday that the clinic contacted 800 people about losing access to service, and that 600 had not accessed the service in the last two years. CBC News will update this story when Western responds with its own figures. 

The school said this is not a policy change, but a policy enforcement, as the clinic was originally intended for full-time main campus employees. There are 250 eligible staff on the clinic's waitlist, said Western vice-provost John Doerksen when asked about the change in February. 

He said the university will continue to offer primary care to retired full-time employees and their families. 

"The clinic made efforts over these years to support as many additional patients as possible," Doerksen said. "Supporting those who do not have full-time Western employment is no longer sustainable."

Doerksen says that while faculty at affiliate colleges may have accessed the clinic in the past, they were never technically eligible for the service, as they are not employed by the university.

"That gets a little muddy," said UWOFA president Johanna Weststar. "We have a lot of people who actually teach on the main campus and the affiliates, so sometimes it can be difficult to track."

Adding to the family doctor shortage

There have been talks between UWOFA and Western about changing clinic access for close to a year, Weststar said. The unions representing Kings and Huron employees said they were not made aware ahead of time that patient lists would be tightened.  

"We were told that the clinic is quite a bit over capacity and we know that over the last number of years, they have been having staffing shortages with an inability to recruit and retain doctors in the clinic," she said. 

There are close to 140,000 Londoners without a family doctor, according to Andrea Loewen, whose job is to recruit doctors to the area. She is presenting about doctor retention at a city council committee meeting next week, where she will describe the challenges London faces bringing in and keeping doctors. 

Read has already started his search for a new family physician, which he said will be a challenge. He said the promise of a family doctor influenced him to teach at Huron back in 2009, and he started using the service right away.

"If they're going to end that, then that's going to be hundreds, if not thousands of people suddenly in the pot looking for family doctors."

Weststar said the clinic is a draw for many faculty coming to Western from other cities, knowing they will have immediate access to medical care amid a provincial doctor shortage.

"It's very important to recognize that the family doctor shortage is a real crisis," Weststar said. "Having the Employee & Family Health Clinic on campus is a really valuable service."