{"id":5062,"date":"2010-02-24T11:01:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T16:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/UpbeaT\/?p=5062"},"modified":"2010-02-24T11:01:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T16:01:51","slug":"medical-care-at-u-of-t-and-the-trouble-with-finding-a-doctor-in-toronto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2010\/02\/24\/medical-care-at-u-of-t-and-the-trouble-with-finding-a-doctor-in-toronto\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical care at U of T and the trouble with finding a doctor in Toronto"},"content":{"rendered":"It was bound to happen sometime. This year, it was a grey and dirty Monday morning when I opened my front door to find the ill-fated letter perched in my mailbox, stuffed between grocery store pamphlets sporting images of fluorescent deli meat. The letter read something like:\n
Dear patients,\n\nIt's been my privilege to work as your doctor for the past\u00a0seven months. However, I have decided to move my practice to Northern Canada, so will no longer be able to provide this service. I have not yet found a replacing physician.\n\nSincerely,\n\nDr. Doctor<\/blockquote>\nSo here I am again: doctorless for the third time in five years. Knowing from experience how hard it is to find a doctor in Toronto, I've decided to look into what the university can offer me in terms of both medical care and assistance in finding a new physician.\n\nWhile it's tempting to ignore the absence of a physician in my life, I know all too well that the adage about the\u00a0apples<\/span><\/a> is categorically untrue. You can eat well, exercise daily and sleep a square eight hours a night, but nothing will absolutely protect you from twisting an ankle while hiking, coming down with strep throat, or (my personal best) falling into a construction pit and bruising half your ribs.\u00a0We all need doctors at some point.\u00a0So here is what I found:\n

\n

Health Care for Students on Campus<\/span>:<\/h3>\nMedical care<\/strong>: Turns out that there is a medical clinic<\/a> for students on the second floor of the Koffler Center<\/a> (214 College St). To book appointments you can either show up in \u00a0person, phone\u00a0416-978-8030, or book online through Web Access<\/a>.\n\nPsychological care<\/strong>: Counselling And Psychological Services<\/a>, described earlier by Lucy<\/a>, offers counselling and therapy on an individual or group basis.\n

\n

Health Care Off-Campus<\/span>:<\/h3>\nFinding a GP in Toronto<\/strong>: Students who plan to live in Toronto after they've finished their degrees may want more permanent health care, which they can continue to enjoy after graduation. While U of T has no facility set up to directly help students find off-campus medical attention, Health Services does provide a link to\u00a0\u00a0Health Care Connect<\/a>, a government-run organization that helps Ontarians find doctors.\u00a0Health Care Connect can be reached at 1-800-445-1822 (Monday to Friday from 9 to 5), and also provides online<\/a> registration<\/a> for health care services online.\n

Walk-in Clinics<\/strong>: If all else fails, there is also always the fated walk-in clinic (my last choice). U of T's Health Services provides a list of a number of local clinics<\/a>, and a\u00a0fairly comprehesive map of clinics throughout the city at large can be found here<\/a>. Clinic are often open on weekends, which is helpful when U of T's clinic and most GPs are closed.<\/p>\n\n

Medical Forms<\/span>:<\/h3>\n

Medical Certificates<\/strong>: In the situation where you find yourself too sick to get to an exam or test, you'll need to have a medical certificate filled out by either your own physician or by a Health Services doctor. Before you see a doctor, you'll need to print out and fill in this Medical Certificate form<\/a> and have them complete it. You must take this form with you to the doctor as the forms the doctors have are not accepted by the university.<\/p>\n

Medical Insurance Claims<\/strong>: There are online forms<\/a> available through University of Toronto Students' Union to reclaim money spent on covered medical supplies, which can also be picked up in person from the UTSU St. George Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dental Insurance Claims<\/strong>: Likewise, dental claims can be downloaded<\/a> from the web-o-web, or picked up in person. Forms generally have to be sent within twelve months of an appointment and are abysmally confusing to fill out the first time - one good reason to go in person if you've never done so before.<\/p>\n

So. The next step for me is to test how well Health Care Connect works, as I'd like to find a permanent doctor (who hopefully doesn't then decide to move to James Bay). Perhaps a subject for a future post; I'll have to see how it goes. And until then, I'll keep my eyes open for lurking construction pits.<\/p>\n

-Mary<\/p>\n\n

\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n
\nIt was bound to happen sometime. This year, it was a grey and dirty Monday morning when I opened my front door to find the ill-fated letter perched in my mailbox, stuffed between grocery store pamphlets sporting images of fluorescent…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Medical care at U of T and the trouble with finding a doctor in Toronto”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Medical care at U of T and the trouble with finding a doctor in Toronto”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1454,1461,1457,1451,1455,1453,285,1459,1458,1460,1456,1452],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}