SYDNEY, N.S. — Three new doctors will open a temporary clinic at the Medical Arts Building on Oct. 7 before moving into a permanent practice at the Membertou Sport and Wellness Centre next year.
Dr. Ian Doyle, Dr. Matthew Ernst and Dr. Kylene MacKillop will be inheriting the patient panel of Dr. Reggie Sebastian, who will remain in Cape Breton but will be performing other medical duties such as addiction and clinical work. Each of the three new doctors will spend half their time within the temporary clinic and the rest of their time doing other medical work such as ER shifts. As a result, because the practice was already full, the new doctors will not be accepting any new patients at this time.
There’s good reason for that, explains Doyle.
“When you inherit somebody’s panel of patients there’s the number of patients they think they have and then the actual number. And sometimes that varies. The MSI billing number is sometimes not always the same as how many patients are actually in the practice. So we’ve been really warned to make sure we have the exact number of patients that we will be inheriting and we don’t know that until our electronic medical records are set up,” said Doyle.
So really the goal is to have a place where people can have their one-stop shop for health and then to really start attracting other people to Cape Breton.
“You need to have a balance between the amount of patients that you have in your clinic so that they’re not suffering from extreme wait times to get in to see you. We want to say yes to everyone but you really need to see what you’re dealing with before you start accepting new patients.”
If you were a patient of Sebastian, you will be assigned randomly to either Doyle, Ernst or MacKillop. The office will not have access to medical records until Oct. 7 so it won’t be able to prescribe or refill medications before the clinic officially opens. However, the office is scheduling appointments for the month of October only and if you are a current patient, you can call for an appointment only between 9 a.m. and noon at 902-539-0444.
Doyle is originally from Coxheath. His father is a dentist and his sister is an anesthesiologist in Halifax. He is married to MacKillop, originally from Cantley Village, and they’re both graduates of the Saba University School of Medicine in the Caribbean. They both did their residency training at the Maine Dartmouth Family Residency. Ernst is a Dalhousie graduate and did his family medicine residency in Cape Breton. His wife, Dr. Jenn MacDonald, will be joining the trio at the permanent practice after she completes her training.
In addition to Doyle, MacKillop, Ernst and MacDonald, there will be three other doctors working at the Membertou-based Celtic Collaborative Family Practice, as well as a nurse practitioner, a social worker and a dietitian. Doyle is optimistic that the new centre will not only prove attractive to patients but hopefully to other medical professionals as well.
“So really the goal is to have a place where people can have their one-stop shop for health and then to really start attracting other people to Cape Breton.”
While Doyle says they’re planning to be actively involved in physician recruitment, provincially, a recruitment team is heading back to the United Kingdom this week to try to attract more doctors to live and work in Nova Scotia. Staff from the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration, Nova Scotia Health Authority and College of Physicians and Surgeons will spend five days meeting one-on-one with doctors in London, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester prior to the British Medical Journal Careers Fair in London Oct. 4 and 5.
"Doctors in the U.K. are starting to hear about the opportunities in Nova Scotia from friends and colleagues who have already moved here," said Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab on Thursday.
"Since the physician immigration pathway started, we have approved 44 doctors to come live and work in Nova Scotia."
Nova Scotia representatives will discuss employment and immigration options with doctors and promote the province's two immigration pathways, the provincial physician immigration stream and a new labour market priorities stream for physicians. The new stream is a faster path for permanent residency through the federal express entry system. It was created in response to feedback from doctors who have settled in Nova Scotia this past year.
Now that he’s back home, Doyle says he’s eager to get started.
“I think it’s the most exciting thing is that we’re finally back home and able to practice medicine in Cape Breton, which is ultimately what we went to medical school for. Despite having a lot of good offers from other places, we wanted to get home and see if we could make a difference in Cape Breton.”
