Two groups of physicians are launching the service in response to a growing number of patients presenting with late-stage cancers
Two groups of Victoria family physicians are opening virtual clinics to navigate patients — especially those without family doctors — through screenings to reduce the number of late-stage cancers they see coming through their doors.
“I’ve had far too many shifts as an emergency or urgent care doc seeing patients who do not have a family doctor who have not been screened for cancer,” said Lamb. “If I’m suspicious I do a test and, boom, the CT scan is positive for metastatic cancer. That has happened more times than I can count.” Physicians blame the number of late-stage cancers discovered in recent years on a number of factors: the pandemic, the family-physician shortage, lack of a singular electronic medical record, and patients who are unaware of cancer screening recommendations, indifferent or apprehensive about receiving positive results.
“Our commitment to the public does not end with a referral to the B.C. Cancer Agency and should a patient have difficulty either understanding or accessing their cancer care information, our door will remain open,” said Lamb. “This is a gap that we feel is not being fulfilled in the current state of family medicine or the current state of medicine in general in B.C. so if we can expedite cancer screening and make it more accessible for the public, it will allow for earlier diagnosis,” said Norris.
When Atkinson arrived at the emergency department in December 2021 with stomach issues, she was led to believe it was gallstones. Instead, it was a tumour estimated to be growing for seven years. It had yet to metastasize and was removed along with about 30 centimetres of colon. “I want continuity of care,” said Atkinson. “The clinic is going to phone me in six months. I think that’s fabulous.”
“You hit this barrier when you haven’t got a doctor, you haven’t got the name, to put on the form,” said Bax. “You can’t order these things without a referring clinician on the reports.”“Mammograms are a crazy one, the amount of patients coming into a walk-in clinic just to get a request for a mammogram,” said Bax. “They’ve tried to order it themselves but they are turned away because there is no one to receive the report.
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