BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West
The StatCare clinic in Pointe Claire will close its doors in the coming weeks in the wake of the facility’s operator being granted creditor protection on Dec. 11, officials at StatCare have been told, The 1510 West has learned.
But, according to the court-appointed monitor overseeing the restructuring of the clinic’s parent company, the ELNA Medical Group, that is just one of three scenarios on the table at the moment.
“It’s a disaster as far as I would think,” said a clinic employee who The 1510 West is not identifying because they are not authorized to comment on the situation.
The employee said staff were informed last Friday that the clinics would be among 12 facilities operated by the Montreal-based ELNA Medical Group that would be closed.
Last week, the ELNA Medical Group, a company that bills itself as Canada’s largest network of medical clinics and diagnostic laboratories, was granted creditor protection by Quebec Superior Court, leaving the operations of its facilities in question. The company also received court approval to solicit interest in the possible sale of its facilities, either individually or as group.
In an interview with The 1510 West yesterday, Benoit Fontaine, a spokesman for Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, the trustee named by the court, said the closure of StatCare would involve the transfer of the clinic’s doctors and patients to another ELNA clinic in the West Island. Other scenarios being looked at is the sale of the Pointe Claire clinic to a group of doctors or to other investors.
The possible closure or sale of the Pierrefonds Medical clinic on Gouin Boulevard is also on the table, Fontaine said.
A spokesperson for the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-dell’Île-de-Montréal, which oversees the medical network in the West Island, said yesterday that it had not received “any official notice” from ELNA regarding the future of its clinics, but are working on contingency plans.
“Our teams are currently carrying out an in-depth analysis of the potential impacts that such closures could have on our territory, if they were to materialize,” said Hélène Bergeron-Gamache, an official with the CIUSSS communications department.
ELNA operates more than 100 clinics in five provinces, including 49 in Quebec. In the West Island, ELNA also operates the Tiny Tots clinic in Dollard des Ormeaux.
StatCare, which operates seven days a week, currently has 20 doctors, nine part-time nurses, six part-time receptionists, one full-time receptionist and an administrator, and sees about 16,000 to 18,000 patients a year, including many that are referred from the Lakeshore General Hospital, located across the street on Stillview Avenue in Pointe Claire.
In a statement, the president and founder of ELNA, Laurent Amram, said by seeking bankruptcy protection, the company “is proactively addressing its liquidity challenges, strengthening its financial stability and ensuring uninterrupted care for our valued physicians, health-care professionals and patients.”
In February, ELNA acquired the Brunswick Health Group, which operates the Brunswick Medical Centre in Pointe Claire.
In January, the company bought the largest medical group in the Quebec City region, La Cité Médicale in Sainte-Foy and La Cité Médicale in Charlesbourg.