From the offices of Drs.
Fretz, Block, Farwaha, Hsu, Rounis and Fadhel
A gift to you, our beloved patients.
The day has come where we are happy to announce that we are expecting a new physician in our office in the coming months. For years we have heard your pleas and cries to take on your family members and it has broken our hearts to have had to say “we simply can’t” every time. Now is the time that we will be extending an invite to YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS ONLY to fill out paperwork to be considered for this opportunity in anticipation of getting a new family doctor.
Please READ and FOLLOW these instructions carefully:
Patient registration questionnaires will be available in a box outside our clinic beginning on Wednesday, December 28th, at NOON.
DO NOT CALL our office to ask about this or to ask about the status of your request. The office is CLOSED Dec 26 - Jan 2. Electronic copies of the questionnaires will NOT be available.
Take ONE questionnaire per ADULT family member who requires a family doctor. Again, this is for immediate family members of existing AFM patients ONLY. Limit 2 questionnaires per family. Children <18 years of age do NOT need a full questionnaire filled out. Simply list their names, DOB & PHNs on one parent’s questionnaire.
Please bring the completed questionnaire(s) back to the clinic when it reopens, after January 3rd, 2023 and be sure to personally hand the questionnaire to an office assistant. For your privacy, do not email forms. Our office will not be responsible for lost/misplaced forms. If we are unable to accommodate the new patient, their questionnaires will be shredded.
Patients who already have a family doctor, no matter their location in BC, will NOT be accepted under any circumstances. This is not an opportunity to transfer care.
There will be NO guarantees and this will NOT be a first-come, first-serve process. Requests will be managed according to a number of factors, including medical need and practice composition.
Patients will not be discriminated against on the grounds of age, gender, marital status, medical condition, national or ethnic origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status.
Respiratory Virus Season is here and it’s a Tri-demic!
We have spoken to many of you over the past month who have been sick with cold/flu symptoms. There are currently very high levels of circulating Covid, Influenza A, and RSV viruses, as well as many others. We encourage you to get your Covid boosters and Influenza vaccines at your pharmacy if you haven’t already. Also, consider masking up again when indoors! And remember, masks are still required in medical offices.
Read more about what you can do to protect yourself and your family here. If you are concerned about when to bring your sick child to the ER, click here for recommendations from BC Children’s Hospital.
Online Booking
We, like all other service industries, have been affected by staffing shortages. We encourage you to book your appointments online on our website, so as to keep our phone lines open to our patients with urgent medical issues/questions. In addition, when coming into the office, please keep traffic moving through our waiting room by arriving no more than 5 minutes before your appointment time and when finished with your appointment, please schedule your follow-up appointments online.
Thank You
To all those who have been patient with our new staff, rallied with us at Parliament, brought holiday goodies to our office, and who have genuinely been kind in 2022, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We wish you peace, happiness, and good health in 2023 and we look forward to seeing you soon.