Dropped by his Doctor

If you’re lucky enough to have been in good health for a while, you may want to check in with your family doctor after you hear Wayne Perrin’s tale.

Perrin admits that he’s always been a “typical guy” who doesn’t like to run to the doctor for every little thing. “If I get a cold, I go get some medication, and it goes away in a few days. If I get a sore shoulder, I take a pill and it goes away. But when it's something I know I can't handle, I go see the doctor. And I always thought that was what they were there for.”

So did I. But back in late October, the 57-year-old began to have some health problems that he knew were serious enough to warrant a trip to his family physician. He called the office of the practitioner who had been his G.P. for over a decade.

“The receptionist looked at my file and said, ‘Gee, you haven't been here in quite a while,’” he told me. “According to their records, it had been almost six years since I went to see her last. And I said, ‘Well, lucky me, I haven't been sick in almost six years!”

The receptionist gave Perrin an appointment for a Monday, a little over two weeks later.

On the Friday before that appointment, he came home to find a message on his answering machine that left him stunned. “The message said, ‘The doctor has decided that, where you haven't been in to see her in quite a while, there's no room for you in her practice anymore. So she won't be able to honor your appointment.’”

Perrin says he was completely taken aback. “I thought that was absolutely disgraceful,” he says. “I didn't understand it. I was never a bad patient. I was just there when I needed to go. They always tell you, ‘Don't be running back and forth to the doctor and the hospital over every little thing.’ Well, I don't. And look where it's gotten me.”

Where it got him was scrambling to get care for his worsening illness through a local clinic, which left him feeling just as poorly. Finally, after weeks of medications and two trips to the emergency room, Perrin was admitted to hospital for minor surgery.

I can’t give you Perrin’s doctor’s side of the story because she declined to speak with me.
And Capital Health Spokesperson Peter Graham told me that there is no official policy regarding the appropriate way to terminate a relationship between physician and patient. He said it’s up to physicians to be guided by their professional code, as provided by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia

That voluntary code – the Canadian Medical Association Code of Ethics – specifies that physicians should “continue to provide services until they are no longer required or wanted; until another suitable physician has assumed responsibility for the patient; or until the patient has been given reasonable notice that you intend to terminate the relationship.”

Perrin feels that those guidelines were not followed in his case. “I never told her I didn't want to have her as my doctor. She never sent me notice saying we don't have any room for you and we're going to have to terminate. And I never had another doctor.”

It’s a cautionary tale, at the least. Should we be making up excuses to visit the doctor? Because really, the last thing anyone wants is to be turned away when they finally do need their doctor’s help.