Two new nurse-led clinics open in Montreal amid ER overcrowding

Two additional medical clinics led by nurse practitioners have opened in Montreal to help relieve pressure on the city's beleaguered emergency rooms, the Quebec government announced. 

One is set up at Notre Dame Hospital and the second at the Verdun CLSC. They started operating slowly on Thursday, according to Health Minister Christian Dube's office.

Opening hours are expected to be Monday to Friday from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on Saturdays and holidays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.The new offerings are part of the planning undertaken by the government's crisis cell which was created to address overcrowded emergency rooms.

A similar clinic, the first in Montreal, launched in early December at the CLSC Olivier Guimond, which is located near the Maisonneuve-Rosemont and Santa Cabrini hospitals.

On Thursday, health authorities also announced the launch of a clinic in the Saguenay region that's expected to open on Dec. 12, and told The Canadian Press there will soon be news of a fifth operation.

The clinics will take patients who are referred by ER triage nurses if they are deemed to have non-urgent or semi-urgent cases when they arrive at a hospital.

Patients will also be referred to the nurse-led clinics by the Guichet d'accès à la première ligne (GAP), and the 811 pediatric line.

The clinics' teams will be able to manage "common, acute or chronic health problems," according to a health ministry statement.

Specialized nurse practitioners are trained to diagnose certain illnesses and order specific diagnostic tests like ultrasounds and medications without the supervision of a doctor.

Along with nurse practitioners, the new Montreal clinics will be staffed by nurse clinicians and nurse assistants, the statement said.

However, the CLSC Olivier-Guimond clinic was being run at the outset by volunteer nurse practitioners working overtime to fill the need, as nurses are in high demand.

In a press release on Friday morning, the Parti Quebecois called on the government to set up clinics in all regions quickly, "instead of stubbornly sticking with the private mini-hospitals model, which risks cannibalizing more of the public network's resources for the benefit of the private network," said the PQ's health critic Joel Arseneau.

"The Capitale-Nationale does not have any IPS (nurse practitioner-led) clinic projects," health ministry spokesperson Noémie Vanheuverzwijn told CTV News.

There is, however, a community clinic in lower Quebec City partly funded by the ministry which was a first in 2014, where patients meet not with a doctor but with a primary care nurse practitioner, Vanheuverzwijn added.

With files from The Canadian Press