Internal medicine docs at QEH to send back some referrals due to ‘unsafe’ wait times [Video]

Five internal medicine specialists at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown say they will no longer accept non-urgent referrals starting Jan. 21 because wait times for their services have become “unsafe and unsustainable.”

The five doctors who work at the internal medicine clinic at the QEH advised their colleagues of the change in a memo sent on Dec. 20 that was shared with CBC News. 

The memo says the clinic is “experiencing increasingly unsafe and unsustainable wait times for new consults and follow-up patient visits,” and that the decision by the doctors to limit referrals “was made only after reaching a point where we can no longer provide sustainable and safe care.”

The doctors said wait times for their services have grown from weeks, to months, to more than a year in some cases. According to the memo: 

• Patients who were flagged as urgent by emergency room doctors are waiting …