Cardiology Out-Patient clinic opens at Health Sciences North

A new clinic at Sudbury's hospital hopes to make it easier to get an appointment with a cardiologist and access important test resultsafter the visit.

The Cardiac Out-Patient Centre at Health Sciences North now houses a team of three to four cardiologists in one location at the former Memorial hospital site.

The cardiologists moved their private practice into the Out-Patient Centre last month.

"We felt that a lot of our practice was hospital-based, so why not have a practice at a hospital?"saidDr.DinoShukla, one of the cardiologists.

Cardiology tests nowaccessible by any hospital

Shukla said moving his practice into the hospital means all tests can be accessed by other doctors.

"What usually happens in most [city] centres is that you have private cardiologists working in their own offices, doing testing and seeing patients," Shukla explained.

"But those tests are not available to the entire population because they sit at that office only. The reports are there."

"[Now] if someone comes into the emergency department at two in the morning in Kapuskasing and they're in heart failure, the [doctor] has access to the echocardiogram that was done two days ago [in Sudbury], can look at it, and make decisions on that."

Shukla said he hopes the new clinic will also help reduce the one-year wait time for appointments.

"With multiple cardiologists here, we'll be able to at least triage patients that are quite sick," he said, addingthe clinic will also be able to accept walk-ins forurgent situations.

Private-public healthcare 'the future of medicine'

Shukla told CBC News this type of program is very unique in the province.

"This is not privatizing health care," he said.

"Weare having doctors that are not employed by the health system working within the healthcare system. It changes the model a little bit in that we have a different workload and different concepts than working in the hospitals."

Shukla said the cardiologists still run their own private practices from within the hospital walls and pay for their own secretaries, but the management of the Out-Patient centre is all done through the hospital.

"I think [this] is probably the future of medicine," Shukla said."I think that one of the models we have to look at...is aprivate and public partnership."

"It's done everywhere in the business world. It needs to be considered now in healthcare, without compromising care," he said.

"In healthcare, there is an infinite demand for resources and there is only a finite amount of resources."