Patient Support Center

The vast majority of our existing patients do tell us that they are mostly happy with the office, our staff and the friendly, efficient service they receive here. We’ve put together this Frequently Asked Questions Section for the benefit of all of our patients in an effort to help answer some concerns we hear from our patient base and to make your visit to our offices run as smoothly as possible​.

Please take into account that there are about 1,000,000 people in Ontario who do not have a family doctor. There is a severe doctor shortage in Canada, and the situation may not improve any time soon. The fact is that within our current system of healthcare, there are just too many patients and not enough doctors; we cannot realistically meet the demands of our patient base and provide a level of service that most people would desire without reducing our patient roster by more than 50%. Thanks in part to the support from our in-house pharmacy, Mesa’s Compounding Pharmacy, we were able to expand our premises and hire more doctors for our clinic. But we quickly filled up and again are no longer accepting new patients. We are trying our best to accommodate all of our patients in the community in a reasonable manner and ask for your patience, understanding and cooperation.

To ask us to wait 1 or 2 weeks to see a doctor when you have a flu, cold, infection or sprain isn’t realistic. We agree! We added a Physician’s Assistant, Saskia Knol, to our staff for specifically this purpose. We now consistently have at least 40 ‘Emergency Appointments’ reserved each day to accommodate these types of urgent, daily requests. These are 5-10 minute slots scattered throughout the day and are booked on a first come, first served basis. This allows us to see almost all of our patients who call and need to see a doctor that day for a quick emergency visit. However, on the rare occasion, there may just not be enough available ‘Emergency Appointments’ to meet demand – and on those days where we cannot see you, you must decide whether you are able to wait another day to see if you can be seen by your doctor here or whether you should go to a Walk-In clinic or Emergency Room that day.We added a Physician’s Assistant, Saskia Knol, to our staff for specifically this purpose. We now consistently have at least 40 ‘Emergency Appointments’ reserved each day to accommodate these types of urgent, daily requests. These are 5-10 minute slots scattered throughout the day and are booked on a first come, first served basis. This allows us to see almost all of our patients who call and need to see a doctor that day for a quick emergency visit. However, on the rare occasion, there may just not be enough available ‘Emergency Appointments’ to meet demand – and on those days where we cannot see you, you must decide whether you are able to wait another day to see if you can be seen by your doctor here or whether you should go to a Walk-In clinic or Emergency Room that day.

Adding more emergency slots means taking away planned appointment slots. Doing that would create a greater delay in getting in to see your doctor for planned appointments. We are trying to keep planned appointments to within a 2 week wait and having enough emergency slots to meet the demand of almost all of the morning callers. We feel this is an important level of service to maintain and also allows that the doctors can run their schedule on time and finish their day relatively on time, so they and our staff can get home to their families at a decent hour.

A planned appointment is something you should know about ahead of time. For example, prescription refills, a monthly blood pressure follow-up, an annual physical, insurance forms and paperwork and counselling follow-ups are all considered planned appointments. Emergency appointments are held for infections, fevers, coughs, colds, flues, diaper rashes, strains and sprains, back pain and migraines. It is important to note that prescription refills are NOT emergency appointments. They are considered planned appointments and it is the patient’s responsibility to know when they will run out of medication and book their appointments accordingly in advance.