Managing Your Health Without A Primary Care Practitioner

If you find yourself without a primary care practitioner, you aren\’t alone. In our city in Northern Ontario, the cohort of retiring family physicians with larger practices are taking 1.5-2 new graduates to fill their practices. 

The importance of having a family practitioner is profound. Managing urgent issues, coordinating specialist referrals, preventative health care and immunization updates, annual health reviews, mental health reviews, and helping you access community supports and programs. When you suddenly have moved or find yourself without access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner, you might think mostly of prescription refills as your only concern, but there is a whole host of things you will want to start to coordinate in order to maintain your best health while awaiting a new primary medical team.

Let us together go over some steps you need to take in order to help find yourself a new PCP (primary care practitioner) and also how to take control of your own health care and preventative medicine while you wait.

1. Get on the list for Health Care Connect (in Ontario) 

Call around to local friends or family to get the names of their primary care teams and call to see if you able to be accepted into a their practice.

2. Gather your medical history, including allergies, medications you currently take, your immunization records.

3. Check that your immunizations are up to date. 

To update immunizations, call your local public health unit and book an appointment. Wondering what immunizations you need? Visit my blog post about Adult Immunizations.

4. Familiarize yourself with preventative care. 

Screening Tests

  • Breast Cancer Screening: beginning age 50 unless high risk. More info HERE. You can self-refer to your local Ontario Breast Screening Clinic HERE or call 1-800-668-9304 in Ontario.
  • Colon Cancer Screening: FIIT stool testing begins at age 50 unless high risk, and occurs every 2 years. Visit a walk in clinic for the requisition and get the test mailed to you. If you do not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, you can get a FIT by calling Telehealth Ontario at 1-866-828-9213.
  • Cervical Cancer Screening: Pap testing begins at age 25 (during the pandemic) in sexually active people with a cervix. It occurs generally every 3 years unless high risk. More info HERE. 

5. Family Planning:

If you don\’t have a family doctor, you can get sexual health counselling, family planning birth control, pap testing and sexually transmitted screening done at your local health unit. In Algoma, call 

6. Smoking Cessation: need help quitting smoking? 

Your local health unit can help with counselling, access to nicotine replacement, and even working with your pharmacist to prescribe smoking cessation medications. Visit Smokers Helpline.

7. Blood Pressure Check: yearly at least, you should review your blood pressure. 

Without a family doctor, this can be done at your local pharmacist, a walk in clinic, or at any specialist appointments you might be attending. Wondering how high is too high? Visit Hypertension Canada. If you\’re blood pressure is high, do not panic. If you feel well, call Telehealth Ontario for more direction. Toll-free: 1-866-797-0000.

8. Mental Health Check In: 

If you are concerned that you, or someone you love is experiencing serious symptoms of mental health, you might want more information. For emergency assistance, or if you are feeling suicidal, call 911. 
In Ontario, help can be found at E-Mental Health or CAMH.

9. Chronic Disease Screening and Medication Monitoring

Never stop medication abruptly without advice from a health care provider or pharmacist. Many medications require yearly or even more often drug monitoring, like blood pressure and heart medications, medications for diabetes, blood thinners, thyroid medication etc. Without a family doctor, you will need to check with your pharmacist and keep a calendar of your own lab tests and due dates, and visit a local walk in clinic for lab work requisition. 

10. Bone Health

Finally, having a copy of your important medical records so you can keep track of diagnoses, surgeries, allergies, medications, family history- and dates of each of these, can be so important for that time when you are connected with a new PCP. Most are available to you at a cost from your prior PCP.


hope you find this information helpful. Leave a comment below for more questions or topics, and subscribe to be notified of new blog posts!



Don\’t forget to reference the disclaimer on the main page.

References:

Can Fam Physician. 2019 Aug; 65(8): 585–588. 

Cancer Care Ontario 

Algoma Public Health Sexual Health Clinic

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