New clinic at Hamilton General Hospital gives patients one-stop option
· Toronto Sun
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Doctors in Hamilton have made a portion of the healthcare system convenient.
Hamilton Health Sciences’ (HHS) thrombosis and cardiology teams have partnered to open a one-stop clinic for people with mechanical heart valves who take the blood-thinning medication warfarin to prevent strokes.
“We know that health care is very fragmented,” Dr. Stephanie Carlin told the Toronto Sun. “People often have one complex health condition that requires them to have four or five separate appointments with different specialists and sometimes it is difficult for all of them to communicate in a timely manner and have all their heads put together to come up with one plan for the patient.”
The Mechanical Heart Valve Clinic at Hamilton General Hospital is co-led by three HHS team members: cardiologist Dr. Emilie Belley Côté, hematologist Dr. John Eikelboom, and Dr. Carlin, a pharmacist specializing in blood clots or thrombosis.
This comprehensive care clinic is the first of its kind in Canada.
“It is really meant to be a one-stop place for patients, where they can see all of the different specialists that they need to see, all in one place and at one time,” Carlin said. “So, that really helps increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their health care because all of us are together at one time. We can really put our expertise together and come up with the best plan for the patient and provide them with all the interventions and education that they need.”
Patients have enough challenges
With 800 patients in the Hamilton area alone, this clinic is a convenience for patients. All the stress that comes with managing multiple doctors at multiple places and multiple times is removed.
“(Our patients) have got enough challenges with their health care and navigating that in their lives,” Carlin said. “It is beneficial for them to not have four or five separate appointments, and not to mention with those four or five separate appointments sometimes the communication between all the doctors or specialists is not always the best where you have one person saying one thing and somebody else saying another. This puts everybody together in one place and we can come up with one plan at one time.”
The convenience factor cannot be understated.
“The amount of time that these people have with complex conditions have to spend driving to all these appointments with different specialist and paying for parking taking the time off work, and if people don’t have paid time off that is costing a lot of money,” Carlin said.
Never mind the convenience factor. No more playing phone tag with specialists in different cities. The doctors enjoy the ease of communication. Energy is focused on one area, for one patient.
“We love that,” Carlin said. “The other part of this too is that all of us, coming from these different specialty areas and areas of expertise we all have come together and advance the research in this field, as well and include our patients in these cutting edge developments that are happening in this area.”
The wheels in motion
The clinic’s wheels were set in motion last summer.
“The three of us got together and said, ‘Hey, we think that this would be a really great opportunity to improve the care for people with heart valves, and to do it in a more efficient way,” Carlin said. “We have been getting lots of great feedback from patients, and we have seen the number of great interventions that we have been able to make. So, there are lots of problems with the patients’ medication management or heart valve problems that we have been able to fix. We have seen the value.”
Warfarin works by slowing the body’s ability to form blood clots, which helps reduce the risk of clots developing on the valve that could block blood flow and cause a stroke.
“Warfarin is really the only blood thinner option for this type of patient,” Carlin said. “Warfarin is a difficult medicine to manage because there are many different things that can affect its levels, and if the levels are too low then people are at risk for blood clots , but if it is too high they can get severe internal bleeding in the stomach or the brain, which can be catastrophic and potentially kill somebody. You have to tightly regulate things so that the numbers are just in the right range.”