Virtual MD helps to bridge doc shortage gap
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on February 7, 2025.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com
Virtual MD, a Primary Care Alberta service that refers Health Link 811 callers to a physician to assess them over the phone or through a secure Zoom link has surpassed the 100,000 caller milestone since its inception in 2022.
“Our program is designed to provide episodic care to those patients who are a little more acute, who have been told they need to see a doctor within 24 hours,” says Dr. Genelle Dingeldein, medical director with HealthLink and one of the Virtual MD physicians helping Albertans. “We’ve got over 80 doctors that are working with our program. We have a mix of emergency medicine physicians and family physicians.”
She says the program is designed for patients who are unable to see a physician within a 24-hour period after talking to a triage nurse through the 811 Health Link line.
“We do encourage people if they have a family doctor and they can see them within 24 hours to do so, but if they can’t see them within that time period, which often is difficult to do or maybe they don’t have a family doctor then this option is for any of those individuals,” said Dingeldein.
In terms of wait times, Dingeldein says it depends on call volume, but if the patient has been told they need to speak to a doctor within a specific time frame, they will try their best to call them within that time.
“We ensure that if the patient has been told they need to be seen within four hours that were calling them back within that four-hour window. And if they are told they need to see a physician within 24 hours, then we ensure we call them back within a 24-hour window.”
She explains that usually it is not the full time-window, but it depends on the call volumes, when sometimes they are able to call patients really quick, while other times they are calling them close to the end of their waiting period.
“In some cases, people may be able to get their needs met instead of using a walking clinic,” says Dingeldein. “In other cases, certain things still do need to be seen in person. Or our physicians will assess the patient and really help them figure out when and where and how quickly they need to be seen.”
She says more than 50 per cent of the time, patients are being helped within that phone or zoom consultation and they can follow up with some self-care advice provided within the consult, to take care of their symptoms at home.
“About 10 per cent of the time we do send patients to emergency or the urgent care centre, and then the remaining percentage, we may advise them that they should follow up with her family doctor or be seen at a walk-in clinic sort of thing,” says Dingeldein.
She adds that sometimes, depending on the situation, they also use the community paramedics with patients who may have mobility issues or have trouble leaving their house to stop by their house and do an assessment.
“There are a few different scenarios. And I would say in a lot of cases, patients may be able to get their needs met through the service versus going to walk-in clinic and other times it’s an alternative where they may still be seen in person.”
If the patient requires medication to treat their symptoms, Dingeldein says they can provide a prescription based on the virtual assessment, but at the moment they do not offer diagnosis. However, the program hopes to add some simple urinary tract infection diagnostics soon.
“If a patient has UTI symptoms, we’ll be able to order urine analysis and a urine culture. So, there is a bit of expansion that is being looked at in terms of being able to offer some limited diagnostics that are appropriate within the virtual care delivery model.
“Our role is more so to do a thorough assessment and secondary triage, so if the patient would need maybe an X-ray they would be referred to see somebody in person,.”
Asked if this could be considered a stopgap to address physician shortage or if this could be the future of the healthcare delivery, Dingeldein says it does help to fill in some of the gaps, but she believes Virtual MD will never replace an in-person visit with a family doctor.
“But I think this does help to fill in some of the gaps and in patients receiving care, whether it’s geography or access to family doctor and that sort of thing,” says Dingeldein.
As for referring patients to an emergency room or urgent care, Dingeldein says it is not just about asking them to go in.
“The great thing now is that we’re on Connect Care since November,” she points out. “And so now all of our notes are visible to the triage nurse on it, so they can see exactly, what our assessment showed, why we sent the patient there, and what we were concerned about.”
Thanks to that, when the patients show up to the emergency room, there is that continuity of care and the triage nurse can assess the situation faster.
“Before Connect Care, we would do things like fax a note over, or pick up the phone and talk to the physician to express our concerns that way, but it does make it smoother having all the information visible in Connect Care.”
To get access to Virtual MD, people can call Health Link at 811 at any time.
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