A patient suffering without access to critical medications due to a doctor shortage in New Brunswick says the weeks ahead are going to be ‘very difficult.’
Without a family doctor, she and many others face significant difficulties renewing prescriptions for opioid painkillers.
Parish, who lives in Victoria Corner just outside the town Woodstock, has been in constant pain since a car accident in 2014 led to a total hip replacement.
“They diagnosed me with CRPS, which is complex regional pain syndrome, which means my body had a traumatic incident where my sympathetic nervous system doesn’t know how to shut down because there’s so much pain in the leg,” she said.
For the past eight years, she has relied on daily doses of oxycodone and oxycocet — opioids classified as controlled substances — to manage her pain. But now, her family doctor is leaving at the end of the month, and she hasn’t been able to find a new one.
“There’s nowhere here in the local area to get it refilled. I have called every doctor’s office from Edmundston all the way to Fredericton. There are no doctors accepting patients, and their list is endless,” Parish said.
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Parish said her current family doctor, as well as 811, told her walk in clinics and eVisit NB, a telemedicine service, would not be able to renew her prescription after her refills expire.
That leaves her with two options: the emergency room or NB Health Link, a stop-gap service designed to help New Brunswickers without a family doctor.
Unlike walk-in clinics, it can provide referrals, order diagnostic tests, and help manage chronic conditions.
Parish is currently on the wait list for NB Health Link.
Until Parish is assigned as a Health Link patient, she’ll have to go to the ER for refills.
“They make you wait forever because you look fine. They leave me in the waiting room for 20, 30 hours when my brain is on fire so bad that I can’t even think,” she said.
According to the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists, pharmacists are currently able to extend and renew prescriptions for controlled substances.
However, that authority comes with several restrictions, and is subject to the pharmacist’s clinical discretion.
Parish said her pharmacist told her they would not be able to renew her opioid based medication.
Health Minister Dr. John Dornan says the province is working to expand access to primary care.
“We are encouraging folks who fall into that dilemma to enlist and enroll with NB Health Link. Physicians and nurse practitioners can help with that,” Dornan told Global News.
A spokesperson for Medavie, the company that runs NB Health Link, says the service has clinics in every health zone, and a new one is expected to open in Woodstock in the coming months.
Until then, Parish remains on the wait list for NB Health Link, hoping for a solution before her prescriptions run out.
“So what do I do? What do we do? I’m not alone. There are so many of us New Brunswickers who either don’t have a family doctor or haven’t had a family doctor,” she said.