By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The Bedford Medical Clinic, a long-established clinic near the CLSC La Pommeraie, will close on Nov. 25 after more than 60 years, its last remaining family doctor has confirmed. The public clinic is one of two service points for the Groupe de médecine familiale (GMF) de La Pommeraie, along with the nearby CLSC, and serves over 2,000 patients.

“I’ve been here alone for the last two or three years, since my partner retired,” said Dr. Jean-Philippe Peck. “There used to be four or five of us, then we were two and we could not rectify the situation. It’s almost impossible to recruit when you’re alone, because the person knows that when you retire, they’re going to have to do everything alone. We weren’t able to recruit at the old clinic, and even when we got a nice new clinic [in 2017] we couldn’t recruit. I was pushing to have the CLSC take over the offices, but they never followed up. It was inevitable that the clinic would close.” He also noted that doctors at the nearby CLSC don’t have to pay the same office fees as their counterparts at the clinic, another incentive for new doctors to choose the CLSC, which has seven family doctors, over the clinic.

Peck said he plans to move to Clinique Santé Saint-Alphonse, in Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby, to practice alongside his son and daughter-in-law, who are also family doctors.

In a letter shared with the BCN by one of Peck’s longtime patients, the doctor writes that he “will be happy to continue providing quality care at my new office” after Nov. 15, and will continue to make house calls to care for vulnerable patients.

Bedford resident John Craighead founded a group called Friends of the Bedford Clinic, which spearheaded a campaign to save the clinic. He said the clinic had a patient-centred approach that was hard to get at the CLSC.

“The clinic has always [had] the more patient-focused approach where the doctor meets with the patient and follows them through and even does house calls or [visits] to old folks’ homes or residences. The one at the hospital has three layers in order to see the doctor,” Craighead said. “They also do very few of the other things [Dr. Peck] does, like house calls and visits to residences.”

Craighead said Friends of the Bedford Clinic looked at various strategies to keep the clinic open, including opening a co-op and asking the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS to assign a doctor on a short-term contract. “We found a few [interested doctors], but the administrator for the Groupe de médecine familiale wouldn’t allocate patients to those people.” Craighead said he believed that by pouring resources into the CLSC, local health authorities had essentially let the clinic wither away.

“The reason we wanted to keep the clinic open was because of the level of care [Peck] provided, a very personal level of care. He was the last in a long line of doctors at the clinic who have all practiced that way.”

“For the last two years, whenever we’ve gotten a new doctor, they have gone to the CLSC,” said Bedford Township Coun. France Groulx, who has also been active in the search for ways to keep the clinic open. “There’s a conflict of visions of the medical profession. A lot of [patients] are going private now.”  

When asked about the philosophical difference between the CLSC and his own practice at the clinic, Peck said only, “There is one.”

The CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS referred a request for comment to the clinic. No one from the CLSC La Pommeraie was available to comment at press time.