Queen's Family Health Team — Local services in Ontario

Despite being very proactive about my health, the clinic’s operating policies have contributed to a substantial decline in my health & the health of my family members who are also at this clinic. I’m very surprised there hasn’t been a complaint filed to CSPO or Ontario’s Patient Ombudsman. I’m sure the reason this clinic has escaped attention is b/c everyone terrified to lose their GP for the slightest infraction. Until we have an organization that protects patients, nothing is likely change. A CPSO complaint just leaves the patient vulnerable to retribution.

My tone will seem snarky, but with good reason. Quality of care @ QFHT seems to depend upon who happens to be your GP. You could find yourself with a terrific doctor or you could end up becoming a case study and worthy of a national news story.

No continuum of care thanks to patients being handed off to an endless revolving door of minimally-supervised, 1st yr residents whose diagnostic skills are abysmal. Not that their MIA professor was much better.

Another review referred to being an “orphaned patient” which is an apt description.

I have a friend who has an exceptional GP at QHFT. His GP sees his patients regularly, & when he doesn’t have an answer, he goes out of his way to find someone who might.

I have barely seen my GP in the last 6 years. It made it impossible to establish any relationship. With no one following my health on a regular basis, I fell through the cracks repeatedly. 1 poorly managed health issue set up the next and so forth until I had multiple misdiagnoses, a v confusing health history, an unnecessary & ruinous surgery, critically ill, & a rare disorder while my residents frittered away crucial time & info as they clung to the wrong hypothesis. If Ive correctly interpreted the CPSO physician guidelines, family doctors are not supposed speculate when it come to a patient’s mental health since it can be prejudicial & detrimental to the patient. Thanks to endless assumptions that I had a psychiatric condition, every Dr I’ve seen in Ontario has made a pre-determination before I speak a word. I had to leave the country & leave my medical records behind in order to get an unbiased (& educated) opinion.

The resident program is reckless. If my resident doctor can’t identify the location of the gallbladder but I can, they’re not ready to see patients.

In order to even get an appt with my GP, I had to see a specific number of residents 1st. On avg, I saw my GP once every 6-7 mo’s. Acc’d to my GP, this was a blanket policy, but I know some of my GP’s patients & they don’t have to meet all the apostles in order to see god. I was eventually deemed a problematic patient, when in actual fact, I was a desperate patient who knew there was something physically wrong. I was denied referrals to nutritionists & GI specialists while I descended into life threatening malnutrition so severe that my own country does not have the resources or experience to treat it. My weight wasn’t alarming enough st 77lbs. It had to drop another 10 lbs and I needed a dire diagnosis & prognosis from the US b4 my GP determined it was serious enough to warrant an appt w her. It still didn’t result in treatment. Complications from that catastrophic weight loss will leave me needing a lifetime of rehabilitation.

Most frustrating, every single health issue that arose was preventable.

It turns out, I don’t have any of the multiple psychiatric disorders my GP tried to label me with. I have PTSD now (not surprisingly), but I had no history of illness, behavioural issues, psychiatric symptoms, or attention seeking. If I never see another Dr again, it still too soon. How many patients enjoy the process of repeating the same details every mo for 5 years knowing that nothing is going to come of it? In lieu of examinations, I get book recommendations. It does not fill me with confidence when I watch you Google “best probiotics” & books @ Amazon. I can do that too. If familiarity w Google is all that’s required to be Dr nowadays, I should sign...

The only reason I give more than one star is because the nurse Amy deserves 5 stars herself. She is extremely kind, and just awesome overall. I wish everyone at this clinic could follow her example.

In every other aspect this clinic is terrible and a textbook example of everything bad you hear about the healthcare system. Extremely patronizing and dismissive experience every time me or someone in my family goes here. I am generally healthy but every time I have gotten a second opinion they tend to disagree with what the doctor here had said (generally that the doctors here don’t take things seriously).

Very fragmented and absolutely no continuity of care. If you actually manage to convince them to get lab tests done for anything, make sure that you are proactive and look at the results yourself. Two people in my family, including my grandmother, have had to be the ones to reach out to the clinic when they had tests which came back with something that needed intervention. No one from the clinic had attempted to follow up for these concerning results. On multiple occasions I have had doctors who ask the most ridiculous questions that make it abundantly clear that they did not even BRIEFLY glance at my chart before seeing me.

Like others here have said, making appointments is also a terrible and inconvenient experience. Shocking for 2025 when most other clinics have online intake. Even for something small like a blood test requisition (not the blood test, just ASKING for the requisition form), you can expect to wait months for an appointment.

The waiting isn’t over once you get your appointment however. What’s funny is that they will make you wait FOREVER in their office, but when the doctor actually sees you they act like they barely have 2 minutes to spare with you. I know the healthcare system is overburdened, and it’s not anyone’s fault in particular, but as someone who also worked in this field I think a bit of bedside manner would go a long way for the average doctor at this clinic.

Me and the others in my family just look back and laugh over a lot of terrible stories we have had at this clinic. We got good care here many years ago but the clinic has changed a lot. Thankfully I have a new doctor now who actually believes in providing thorough care for her patients so I feel like I can leave this review now since I have something to compare to. You will be better off going to wait in the ER for 10 hours than trying to get any help from the team here. You might be okay at this clinic if you are REALLY good at advocating for yourself, researching your own symptoms/lab results, etc. To whoever is running this clinic, handling how it’s organized, and doing the training, please do better. Your patients are more than an opportunity...

Having spent $1000 plus dollars on a chiropodist, with no relief, I went to see my family doctor, Doctor Li. I had been asked to come in, by him, so decided to use this opportunity to ask about my painful feet. My husband comes in with me, so he was able to witness the encounter. Dr.Li asked why I was there, and after reminding him, that it was he that called me, to come in, I asked if i could bring up a concern. When I mentioned my feet, and the fact I enjoyed walking and hiking, and my feet were causing my a significant amount of pain, I was told, that he had 100 plus body parts to look after, and he doesn’t do feet. I told him the clinic suggested I see my doctor. Again he said, he didn’t do feet. He hadn’t received the information from the chiropodist. I said I could bring it in. He suggested I go somewhere else and gave me a name.. I can’t afford any more money on this. I’m really not sure where to go from here.

I guess I am really fortunate to just have a doctor in Ontario. Although I’m on my 4th or 5th doctor in about 5 years, generally speaking, the past doctors and the residents, have been attentive and have a general idea what is in my file, when I go in. Unfortunately, after having a phone appointment, with Dr. Li’s resident, it appeared by the questioning I received about some chest difficulties, they had no idea what I was talking about, and it appeared they felt I was pulling an asthma diagnosis out of thin air. The idea that I have had numerous chest infections, including a few bouts of pneumonia, were something I dreamt about. I was drilled and questioned, about where this was coming from. They did not appear to have any knowledge of the medication I had been on or was on. One of the past refills, had been made by that very doctor. X-rays and cat scan results are in my files. I also asked if I could be talked to about medication changes, apparently that is not my call. After returning to the after hours clinic, and being drilled there and felt humiliated, I was finally given the medication I had been on and worked. After that, I was able to get a couple hours sleep, before I started coughing again. To the clinic doctor, no, I didn’t come in, just because I lost my voice. I came in because I was loosing weight. I was having coughing spasms and anything but clear fluids, triggered a severe coughing spasm. I’m sure I had a viral infection to go along with this, but yes, Ventolin did help ease some of the coughing spasms. The Symbicort does eventually help. I do hope the Cat Scan results and x-ray results got to your...