10/25/2026
Update - Meeting with NL Health
On Tuesday, October 20th, your Council met with the people from NL Health Services that deal with US Memorial. Some of the major issues discussed were:
Recruitment of Physicians:
Currently there has been no change as no new providers have been found that wish to relocate to St. Lawrence on a permanent basis. The recruitment team stated that they continue to advocate for USM and are trying to find doctors and NPs for the area.
Ability to get Appointments-
Concern was brought to the team that many residents have noted that despite calling early in the morning, they are being told there are no appointments available. Team said they would check on this but their stats show that there are very few times that USM appointments are fully booked. It was noted by Council that due to the fact that the locum doctor is also dealing with long-term care residents, this may be taking up some of the appointment times. With some recent changes to long-term care provider access, it is anticipated that this may free up some appointment times. NL Health said they will continue to monitor this. #
Blood Work and X-Ray Appointments
Council has continued to advocate for patients who require either blood work or X-Ray appointments, after seeing a physician. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, these patients have to return on a different date to get this done when they are already at the USM site. The NL team noted that additional afternoon appointments have been added for bloodwork on certain days and X-Ray appointments are being looked at by NL Health. While this will help in some cases, it will not be possible to eliminate the need for patients to return in most cases.
Re-Rostering of Residents who Lose Family Doctors -
This discussion created the largest amount of discussion with Council strongly advocating that these patients should have been rostered to USM and not to Burin Health Care. Council stated that these patients were never informed of the current practice and it was not the fault of these patients that their provider left the area. Many would not have chosen to take the Family Doctor had they been fully informed. NL Health noted that USM currently services 1600 patients and at this time are at their full capacity. They had also previously noted that the patients were registered to Burin so there would be a physician always available to follow up with the residents whose provider had left. Council felt it would have been just as easily followed up on by USM providers when they would have access to a facility in their community, not had to make to drive to Burin and in many cases wait for up to 10-12 hours in emergency before seeing a physician. Council reminded the NL team that our community has a majority of senior citizens who often may not have direct access to transportation and simply getting to Burin also becomes an issue for them. We were told this would be looked into again and the regional director would contact the mayor within a week regarding this issue.
*** We must note here that a follow phone call took place 2 days later. Senior leadership of NL Health stated that they were now looking at a process where these patients would be rerostered to USM but that it would not happen overnight and may be a slow process because of the number of patients currently on the roster of USM. However, he again assured the mayor that they were working on fixing this issue.
New Services for USM-
Two new services were discussed. 1. Positive news was given regarding the training of nurses at USM being able to provide IV antibiotics. Council was assured this was in progress and while all nurses have not been trained, the process of completing this is underway.
2. USM now has a Nurse Prescriber. Ms. Margo Bishop has received additional training and is now available to provide many additional services. (See photo). These services are only available to residents attached to USM but they do provide a service for a great many of our residents who have to travel elsewhere to receive them.
