Provincial Health Care Card
Provincial Health Care Card
For first visits to Sunset Ridge Medical Clinic in Cochrane, Alberta, please bring your photo ID and a valid provincial health care card. You will be charged for your visit should you not have a valid provincial health care card.
Contact Information
Please keep our office updated with any changes to your contact information so we can reach you in a timely fashion.
Prescription Refills
Please book an appointment to refill your prescription. Generally, prescription duration and refill quantity reflect the amount the physician feels are warranted based on the clinical situation.
As a result, we do not fill prescriptions over the telephone. Special consideration may be given to those living in long-term care facilities or patients with serious mobility issues, at the discretion of the attending physician.
If you find yourself unable to get an appointment before running out of a prescription, having a pharmacist dispense a short-term prescription (< 1 month) is a reasonable option. However, please avoid obtaining long-term prescriptions from your pharmacist as your physician may have a follow-up planned around the timing of your next prescription renewal and this significantly disrupts that process.
Tips
It is a good idea to learn the names of your medications and why you take them. If you are unable to remember them, make a list of the medications and reasons you take them and keep it with you. Please ask your physician to help you if you are uncertain as to why you are taking certain medications.
If you cannot remember the names and dosages of your pills and how many you have left, you can bring your medications, in the bottles, to the office. It is difficult for most physicians to identify medications based on a description of their appearance.
When you pick up your medications, please check that the pharmacy has indicated the correct number of refills on your medications. On a pill bottle, this will appear as Refills:# or Ref:#. Refills are sometimes omitted by the pharmacy.
A prefix before a proper medication name refers to the generic manufacturer of that medication (ex. Apo-, Ratio-, Ran-, Teva-). Occasionally there are factors in how a medication is manufactured that allow some patients to tolerate one generic over another.
Test Results
Tests results are not discussed over the phone. We will notify you to book an appointment to discuss test results that either requires follow-up or discussion.
Please know that being recalled to discuss results doesn’t mean there is a serious problem.
Very occasionally, test results are lost in the follow-up process. If you continue to have symptoms or were being investigated for a potentially serious complaint, please book an appointment to follow up on investigations.
Patients need to know that family physicians are not alerted when results from investigations ordered by another physician are available unless the other physician specifically requests the results to be sent to the family physician's office.
Confidentiality
All the staff at Sunset Ridge Medical clinic are fully informed on issues of confidentiality and exercise great care in ensuring patient confidentiality.
All patients have the right to confidentiality. A patient’s medical information cannot be released to family members or friends without the expressed verbal or written consent of the patient.
Adolescent minors have the right to privacy for clinical visits. As such, parents accompanying minors may be asked to leave the examination room for at least a portion of the clinical visit. This is by no means a reflection of concerns about the parent-child relationship.
We are unable to release information to a third party (ie. law offices, insurance companies), without signed authorization from a patient or, if applicable, his or her guardian.
Mutual Respect and Honesty
A healthy physician-patient relationship is based on mutually respectful and honest communication and behaviour.
Our entire team will strive to treat all our patients with the utmost honesty and respect, and we request our patients do the same in return.
Appointment Cancellation/Missed Appointments
Please provide 24 hours notice if you need to cancel an appointment. Same-day cancellations will be recorded as missed appointments. We understand that at times circumstances beyond a person's control lead to the last-minute cancellation of an appointment. However, we reserve the right to charge a fee for missed appointments in situations that are repetitive or are felt to be unreasonable.
Chaperones
Please do not hesitate to request a chaperone to be present for any examination, not just for those of a sensitive nature.
Wait Times
We all strive to run our clinic on time. However, we kindly ask that patients understand that fully eliminating wait times is, unfortunately, not possible. Unforeseen circumstances such as minor emergencies, unexpectedly complex patient situations, and unplanned phone calls with other medical professionals can all lead to waiting times.
Predicting what will happen on any given day is impossible, and this unpredictability is usually the reason a physician is running late. So, please remember that while we all work hard to be on time, our priority is providing thorough care, and one day it might be you requiring the extra time.
When checking in, our staff will try and inform you if wait times are longer than 25 minutes. If you are unable to keep your appointment because of the wait time, we will be happy to reschedule you.
Medical Forms
Please notify the office staff if you have a form that requires completion, along with the nature of the form, when you book your appointment. Please be aware that because form completion often requires a chart review to ensure accuracy, even with seemingly simple forms, forms are often not completed at the time of your visit.
If there is a charge for the completion of a form, the cost will be discussed with you in advance of the form being completed (see Uninsured Services for more information).
Locum Coverage
Locum physicians are those who cover for other physicians when they are away.
When a locum physician is covering your regular family doctor, patients are encouraged to book appointments with the locum physician, particularly for acute or minor concerns. These physicians are experienced with treating patients they don’t know well, and will have access to your medical record. When patients choose not to see a locum physician, this can create a back-log in your regular physician’s schedule.
We understand that some patients have medical issues that are complex and have a lengthy history, and if a concern is not urgent, waiting for your physician’s return in these circumstances is reasonable.
Opioids
The prescription of certain medications in Alberta, including opioid medications, is monitored by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, through the Triplicate Prescription Program. As the use of these medications must be closely followed by one responsible provider, please see your regular family physician for triplicate prescriptions and renewals.
Please note that we DO NOT prescribe opioids to walk-in patients.
E-Mail Communication
Standard email services are generally not encrypted and therefore email communication is not encouraged. However, if you would like to send us an email, please mail us at info@sunsetridgemedical.ca. Sunset Ridge Medical Clinic is not liable for any missed communication via email.
Insurance Company Disclosure
By law, a physician is obligated to disclose all health information requested by an insurance company, if signed consent is provided by the patient. Providing selective information is prohibited.
Also, to fulfill our medical and legal obligations, physicians are required to document all aspects of our interactions with patients. Physicians cannot purposefully withhold information from a patient chart.
