Here’s the health-care fantasy in Montreal, circa SUMMER 2024, where waits for medical procedures and emergency rooms border on the ludicrous, the odds of securing a family doctor are becoming synonymous with winning the lottery, and navigating the bureaucracy-laden system to find the right specialist is, well, let’s not even go there because I’m still recovering from that misadventure:
You arrive at a beautiful, well-located city centre high-rise and take a state-of-the-art elevator up to the designated floor. As you make your way into the brand new, elegantly appointed lobby that gives off serene and soul-refilling vibes rather than scary clinical ones, you’re greeted by several members of the team at the front desk, all with sincere smiles, ready to direct you to your ultimate destination.
Which, in the lingo of this next generation in health-care and prevention, is a care pod featuring four highly-vetted professionals, all strategically positioned to assume a pivotal role in providing you with the best possible medical attention and care.
On the left-hand side of the cozy and private enclave, intelligently equipped with comfortable seating (another simple yet meaningful addition in the often uncomfortable world of health care, even in the realm of private clinics), are your first two points of entry for health-care professionals.
The first, an administrative assistant, is wholly dedicated to working with your new family doctor (stay tuned for that reveal coming imminently) to keep your health-care files rigorously up-to-date and accommodate all aspects of administration-related issues.
The second professional in the equation, your health-care coordinator, is equally as savvy, albeit tasked with a different purpose: to ensure a seamless experience on your health-care journey by connecting you to the right in-clinic team of medical specialists and wellness and prevention experts, including world-class cardiologists, neurologists, orthopaedic surgeons, pulmonologists, plastic surgeons, plus a team of in-house massage therapists, acupuncturists, osteopaths, and even a psychiatrist well versed and planet-leading in the most up-to- the-minute mental health treatments involving psilocybin and ketamine. Moreover, this liaison angel is also on scene to swiftly connect you to any necessary specialists in the primary health-care system, with whom the clinic enjoys well-established relationships.
Are you feeling the fantasy yet?
Next, just behind the two doors in this dream pod, leading to their respective offices, are your incredibly well-trained, practically impossible to find in today’s landscape, new family doctor and nurse, both there with impressive credentials and sunny, relaxed bedside manners, to give you the personalized and highly professional care you need and deserve and have been desperately searching for.
Even better: they have direct access to state-of-the-art services at their fingertips, like an on-site lab for blood work offering immediate results, as well as other leading diagnostic tools and technology (i.e., medical imaging and x-rays coming soon) boasting all the bells and whistles of the most advanced facilities in the modern world.
Finally, there’s also an opportunity for minor emergency care, access to a brand-new in-house medical aesthetic clinic run by a leading Harvard-trained dermatologist, and, should you need it, a restful lounge ideal for a little me-time, just beckoning you to sit down, exhale, and enjoy an herbal tea and wholesome snack, often curated from the best of Quebec’s homegrown healthy food brands.
If only there were such a health-care destination that existed in our fair city beyond imagination (or, in my case, imajennation!).
Well, there is. Thanks to the magnificently forward-thinking Dr. Hoa Phong Le, visionary founder of my above-described medical fantasy come to life, Quatuor MD, we now have this elevated private care within easy reach.
Frustrated with the highly flawed system as it was, the ambitious young lawyer turned family doctor (yes, you read that right) made it his mission to create an option for health care that would address many, if not all, of the gaps in the current system with a view to taking health care to an as yet unimagined level of efficiency and evolution.
Our theme for this volume, connectivity, also weighed heavily on his mind as he strove to not only create better connections and communication between the doctors and professionals on his team, ultimately culminating in the provision of better overall health care, but also sought to restore the much-needed connectivity and relationships between patients and their health-care providers.
Now if that isn’t worthy of dream territory, I don’t know what is.
For more on the Quatuor experience, visit QuatuorMD.com.