Policies & Privacy

Appointments can be booked by phone at 905-455-1455 or through our website

• Please provide a brief description of the nature of your problem to allow for proper time allocation and appropriate triaging

• All family members require their own appointment

• Follow-up appointments may be required if you have several concerns in order to ensure appropriate care

• As a courtesy, our online booking system provides appointment reminders via email or telephone, however these are not guaranteed. You are responsible for ensuring that you are aware of your appointment time and date and for arriving on time with or without any prior notification. Please contact our clinic to clarify your appointment schedule if you have any questions
  

Please arrive to your appointment in a timely manner

• As a team, our doctors always strive to remain on time for appointments, however your appointment may be delayed if there are pressing medical issues or emergencies that occur earlier in the day. We appreciate your patience and understanding during these instances

• We ask that you try to arrive at the clinic approximately 10 minutes prior to your scheduled appointment time. This allows for time for check-in, completion of paperwork, and any required initial tests and assessments prior to you being roomed

Arriving late may result in needing to reschedule your appointment. If arriving late results in your physician being unable to see you, it will automatically be considered a missed appointment, and a no-show fee may apply (Please see Fees and Uninsured Services section)

• This is to ensure that all our patients who arrive on schedule do not have to wait longer than necessary and/or compromise the quality of care they receive
  

We require appropriate notice if you cannot attend your appointment

• This policy exists to ensure that our limited daily appointment slots are not being wasted and that patients are able to access the medical care they require

• There is no charge for rescheduling or cancelling an appointment if you provide at least 24 hours' notice. Failure to do so may result in a late cancellation fee (Please see Fees and Uninsured Services section)

• Missed appointments will result in a no-show fee. These fees may vary depending on the type of appointment that was missed (Please see Fees and Uninsured Services section)

• Recurrent unexplained missed appointments may result in you being discharged from the practice

• There are some extenuating circumstances where this policy may not apply to eg, inclement weather or emergencies. Please contact the office as soon as you are aware that you will be unable to make it to your appointment.

There are some special circumstances that may result in your appointment being cancelled eg, your physician is unable to make it or there is inclement weather. Every effort will be taken to notify and reschedule affected patients as soon as possible without any associated cost to the patient

As part of our family health team goals and our drive to provide comprehensive primary care, we try our best to accommodate appointments with short notice through both your primary family doctor and through our on call services

• If you require emergency medical care, please call 911 or present to your local emergency department

• If you require an appointment with a physician for an urgent matter, you can:

  • Call our clinic in the morning and request an appointment with our on call physician. Walk-ins will not be accepted. Please see our clinic hours page for more details on times.

  • Call telehealth services at 1-866-797-0000 to speak to a nurse who will provide advice and arrange appropriate follow up

  • Go to Peel Memorial Urgent Care Clinic at 20 Lynch St. in Brampton

  • Book an appointment online with our local Regional Virtual Urgent Care Clinic here: https://regional-virtual-urgent-care.ca/
    

Our on call physicians have full access to your chart and your primary family doctor will be able to see/review any recent visits or investigations as needed and arrange appropriate follow up. Please be aware that our on call services are for urgent issues only, any chronic matters or follow up visits should be booked with your primary family doctor.

Please note that we do not receive any information from walk in clinics, cannabis clinics or virtual care clinics such as notes or records. Please inform your primary doctor if you have received care in one of these outside clinics so they can be updated on any changes to your medical information (e.g. medication changes, antibiotic prescriptions etc).

Repeated visits to clinics outside of Queen Square Doctors may result in you being derostered by the clinic.

Our patients are expected to take an active role in managing their medical conditions and medications. For long term medications our physicians will generally provide you with sufficient supply to last you between appointments. Please be aware that we are unable to provide refills for medications that are only used periodically or for acute conditions (e.g. antibiotics). You will need to book an appointment with a physician for this.

It is your responsibility to keep track of your medication supply. If you are running low on your medications please follow the steps below:

• Contact your pharmacy to determine if you have any further refills available

• If this is a medication you have been taking for a long time, please request that your pharmacy send a refill request via fax to our clinic. Please be aware that due to the volume of refill requests we receive daily, it can take up to 5 business days for these refills to be completed. Please ensure that you are sending these requests in a timely manner

• In some circumstances, especially with chronic conditions like high cholesterol or diabetes, your physician will purposefully give you a certain amount of medications and request that you come back in a certain number of months. Please ensure that you appropriately book back for a follow up appointment as these medications can only be refilled after a repeat assessment

• Please ensure that you are bringing any and all medications that you require refills for to your appointment

Refill requests should come straight from the pharmacy or discussed with a physician at an appointment. Please do not call the clinic for such requests as this cannot be completed by our medical office assistants.

Our clinic uses Medeo for email contact with our patients, which offers a secure online portal through which information can be transmitted. We are unable to communicate through personal emails due to privacy concerns and cannot guarantee the confidentiality/ privacy of emails sent outside of this system.

By providing the clinic with your email address, you give consent to communicate with you via email. If you would like to withdraw your consent, please contact the clinic. It is also your responsibility to advise our clinic of any email address changes. Please be aware that any messaging through email may exist within our electronic records indefinitely as part of your medical chart.

Please be aware that Medeo is specifically for patients to receive relevant documents from their physician (e.g. after an appointment). Please do not send any medical questions or request appointments through Medeo as this portal is not routinely monitored by a physician and cannot be reviewed/responded to in a timely manner. We encourage you to book an appointment to address any medical concerns.

When you have bloodwork or tests done, we encourage you to sign up for the laboratory’s online patient portal if you wish to have access to your results. Due to the number of reports that our clinic receives daily, we are unable to contact every patient regarding normal test results. Please book an appointment if you have any questions or concerns regarding your investigations. It is your responsibility to attend appointments to discuss abnormal investigations and results once informed.

Please note that all requisitions and forms provided by your physician are recorded in our electronic medical records. Any alteration or unauthorized use of these documents is considered fraudulent. Perpetrators will be immediately dismissed from our clinic, and this may also result in legal action against you.

We are privileged to live in a province where we are provided with healthcare through OHIP. However, this does not cover all services that you may request. For example, forms, travel advice, cosmetic procedures etc. are uninsured and will need to be paid for privately. Please see our updated list of uninsured services and their prices here.

Certain forms may be required by your insurance company or outside parties that would be charged for completion

• These can include forms for Disability, Insurance applications, etc.

• These forms are either paid for by the Third Party or are the responsibility of the patient

• Please be aware that, as per the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), your physician has between 45-60 days (depending on the kind of form) to complete these forms. Please ensure that you are providing these forms promptly and are aware that this may require a booked appointment to review.

• If you require these forms in a shorter time interval, you will be charged a Rush fee (if this is feasible, depending on your physician's availability/discretion).

There are certain medications such as benzodiazepines, stimulants, sleep aids and opioids/narcotics that are considered controlled substances due to their higher risk of addiction, dependence and misuse. The dispensing of these controlled substances are monitored at a pharmacy and government level. Your physician may require you to complete a Controlled Substances Contract and/or periodic drug screening tests in order to continue to provide you with these medications safely.

As a result, your physician will only provide you with a necessary amount with controlled refill lengths. Any refill requests will require an appointment with your primary family physician - these appointments are not appropriate for our on-call clinic. Thus, please ensure that you are booking on time. Due to monitoring requirements, you should only be seeing 1 provider for these medications and be compliant with the given refill schedule. If you are routinely requesting early refills or seeing outside practitioners (eg, walk-in clinics) for these medications, this may result in you no longer being able to request them with your physician.

Failure to follow these policies may result in a warning, discontinuation of the prescription, or dismissal from our clinic.

Queen Square Doctors strives to provide a safe and respectful environment for both staff and patients. We have a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate, abusive or threatening behaviours in person or over the phone. This applies to patients as well as anyone who may attend an appointment with a patient.

This includes but is not limited to:

• Swearing or yelling

• Threatening language or behaviours

• Disrespectful or demeaning language or behaviours

• Intimidation

• Bullying

• Violence and physically aggressive behaviour

• Sexual harassment or unwanted physical contact

• Discriminatory or racist remarks

• Damaging property

• Refusing to leave the property when requested

• Failure to observe policies and/or contracts

Immediate action will be taken against these incidents. This may result in perpetrators being asked to leave the clinic, the police being called, and/or dismissal from our practice.

Please be aware that taking photos, videos, or audio recordings in the waiting room or other public areas where patients and staff members are present is not allowed. If you wish to make recordings/take pictures in the examination room, it is important to seek permission from the physician/medical professional in the room with you.

Queen Square Doctors is a teaching practice associated with McMaster University and often has learners from this school and others. Many of our physicians work with medical students (still in medical school who will become doctors) as well as Residents (licensed doctors who are completing training in a specific area).

If you are seen by a medical student, you will always be seen by a physician to go over your care and advise you of next steps.

Residents are doctors and are capable of diagnosing and treating you, and it is possible that you will only be seen by that provider, as opposed to our physicians. However, please note that all patient visits are reviewed by the attending physician.

Many of our physicians are using Artificial Intelligence scribes to help with efficiency during patient assessments. These tools will use audio information from your conversation with your physician to help create summaries of your appointments for your medical file. All scribes used are HIPPA compliant, and no data will be used for any purposes other than documentation. You will be notified at the time of your appointment if your physician is using such a tool. Please inform your physician if you do not consent to having these digital tools used during your assessment.