Capstone Medical Clinic - Edmonton

Introduction

Capstone Medical Clinic is a Family Medicine clinic, located in the West end of Edmonton. It is equipped with full-time office staff, a chronic disease nurse, and access to the Edmonton West Primary Care Network (which offers additional resources to patients, such as information classes, access to a pharmacist, and mental health services).

Family physicians working in the clinic will see a wide range of patients, from children to seniors. The clinic is also equipped for basic procedures such as suturing simple lacerations, simple joint injections and skin biopsies.

After Hours

If you need assistance after hours and it is urgent, please call the office for directions on how to contact the physician on call for the clinic. This service is meant to assist patients with urgent issues and should not be used for any other issues (eg. prescription refills, booking appointments, or directions to the clinic).

However, if you have an emergency, you are encouraged to go the nearest Emergency Department, or call 911.

Office Visits

Although patients may require to see a physician for numerous reasons, there are essentially four types of office visits that may be booked. Please keep this in mind when calling to make an appointment so that our clinic can book appropriately:

1. A typical office appointment

• The most common type of visit, where patients can discuss (but are not limited to)

  • questions or concerns regarding their health

  • prescription refills

  • follow-up, as per the doctor's request

  • forms to be completed (these may cost an additional fee not covered by Alberta Health Care - see the clinic for a pricing list)

• These visits are slotted for only 10-15 minutes, so patients are encouraged to plan their visit accordingly!

• Because of time constraints, we ask that patients try and limit their concerns to no more than 2 issues per visit. This will ensure that the physician can address them all in a satisfactory manner. In other words, if you need to discuss multiple issues that will take more than your allotted time slot, you should prioritize your issues so that the most important ones are addressed right away, and book another appointment at a future date to discuss any outstanding concerns.

• If there are too many issues being addressed in one visit, the physician may request that another appointment be booked in the future so that other patients do not have to wait an excessive amount of time to be seen.

2. Procedures

• Because some procedures require additional time for preparation, the physician may ask that these be booked as a separate appointment. Typically, the procedures that may require an additional appointment include skin biopsies and joint injections.

• Please let the clinic know in advance if a procedure is to be booked so that the appropriate equipment is available, to ensure that everything is done as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

3. The complete physical (30 minute appointment)

• Also known as the 'periodic health exam' or the 'annual exam', the purpose of a complete physical is to screen patients for conditions that if not caught early enough, could be life-threatening if left untreated. These conditions include - but are not limited to - hypertension, dyslipidemia (high cholesterol), breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and osteoporosis.

• Often, patients do not feel any symptoms early on in these conditions, which is why the complete physical is done so as to prevent complications of these diseases.

• Although some aspects are similar, the complete physical is not the same as a driver's medical. Consequently, patients may be asked to book a complete physical at a separate appointment from a driver's medical.

• Depending on age will determine how frequently a complete physical should be done. Generally, after the age of 40, this should be booked on a yearly basis, and no further apart than every 2 years.

• Patients are asked to bring all of their medications (or at least a list of them, with doses) to the complete physical, to ensure that the list on record is up to date.

4. Complex care plans

• The complex care plan is a relatively new initiative in Alberta that is aimed at targeting individuals with multiple medical conditions (eg. hypertension, diabetes, asthma, obesity, addictions).

• Often, patients who come in to discuss a complex care plan have been asked to do so because more time than a typical office appointment is needed to consolidate medication lists and develop a management plan for all of the medical issues that the patient may have.

• Once a plan is decided upon, the patient and physician are expected to sign the agreement to acknowledge that the goals for each issue were discussed.

• Patients are also encouraged to keep a copy of the complex care plan on hand at all times so that other physicians can familiarize themselves with these medical issues should an emergency arise.

• The complex care plan is generally held once a year, with follow-up arranged on a regular basis with either the chronic disease nurse, or your family physician

Expectations

It is our goal to ensure that patients are satisfied with their care in the clinic. In return, it is expected that patients treat all staff members with respect. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, or any other forms of harassment are not tolerated at all, and may be grounds for dismissal from the practice if they occur. Although patients are rarely dismissed from the clinic, there are a few circumstances (including those listed above) where this may occur, and patients will be given warning before this should happen.

If you require prescription refills, please try and make those calls during office hours so that the physician on call is not burdened with this task. Generally speaking, your physician will not phone in prescriptions to the pharmacy, so you will be required to make an appointment for this.

While patients are expected to make it to their appointments on time, there are circumstances where this may not be possible. If you are unable to make an appointment, please try and let the clinic know 24 hours in advance so that the time slot can be allocated to someone else. Failure to do so on multiple occasions may be grounds for dismissal from the clinic.

Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions or concerns with the clinic, please do not hesitate to let us know either during an appointment, or by calling the clinic during office hours. Although we do our best to provide quality care for our patients, if you do not tell us about your concerns, we will not know that there is a problem!