It is, however, left here for historical reasons.

11-June-2001

Dear Patients:

In the past you may have observed that we would routinely have locum physicians in to cover our practices when we went on vacation. With the increasing shortage of physicians in BC, I have been unable to find a locum for the last two years, and Dr. Kline has been unable to find a locum this summer. I will be taking 3 weeks of vacation this summer, and as a result I will have to close my office from 23/7/2001 - 6/8/2001 and from 27/8/2001-4/9/2001. My associate Dr. Kline will be available to see those patient emergency problems he can accomodate, except from 30/7/2001 - 5/8/2001 when the office will be completely closed. If you have any medical emergencies at this time, you should go either to a walkin clinic or a hospital emergency department.

Patients should plan their prescription medication needs so that they have sufficient medication to cover them during the time that the office is closed. Any prescriptions that come up for renewal while I am away will not be filled through the office because there will be no physician to review the prescription renewals.

From 23/7/2001 - 4/9/2001, there will only be one physician present in the office and thus no routine physical examinations will be performed. While Dr. Kline has indicated that he considers his practice closed during the 3 weeks he is on vacation and I am providing only emergency coverage for his patients, my experience in the past with such situations is that office visits increase by at least 50% for the physician covering both practices. Accordingly, appointment times will be limited to 10 minutes maximum, and complex problems of a non-urgent medical nature will either have to be dealt with on multiple separate office visits, or delayed until September. Housecalls will be limited to medical emergencies in the west end only and wednesday afternoons will be given over to office visits should this be necessary to deal with increased office patient volumes. Dr. Kline and I will both be working at least one Saturday during July/August 2001 if required and further details regarding saturday office hours will be made available either via a notice in our office, or at this location. I will also post a more detailed discussion of the impact of locum physician shortages on my future medical practice on these sites RSN.

Patients are reminded to get all of their prescriptions up to date before mid July as no prescription renewals will be possible from 30/7/2001 - 5/8/2001. For those patients on coumadin, we may ask you to have your INR done earlier than you normally would have it done so that we can ensure that coumadin doses may be adjusted if necessary before we are both out of the office.

Yours truly,
Boris Gimbarzevsky, MD