Please read the following information carefully:
1. For all medical-related appointments with the dermatologist, a valid OHIP card must be presented at the front desk when checking in. Otherwise, a fee will be required until your health card has been renewed/updated.
2. For your appointment, please allow 45 minutes to one hour. This includes wait-time. Also, you will need extra time to find parking.
3. To help facilitate the flow of patients Dr. Skotnicki and her associates deal with one to three questions or issues per appointment.
4. Procedures for removal of skin tags, moles or cysts usually are scheduled separately.
5. For all non-OHIP procedures, please pay by debit, cash, Visa or MasterCard only.
6. NEW: All patients are required to book an appointment with the dermatologist for any prescription repeats. These cannot be obtained over the phone or via your pharmacy.
7. We ask that family members cannot be seen without a previously booked appointment.
8. Please notify our office more than 24 hours in advance if you need to cancel or re-book your medical-related appointment or a $75 cancellation fee will be charged. If your appointment is for a cosmetic-related appointment the fee will be $125.
9. Referrals must be received in our office before an appointment can be booked. We will get back to you with an appointment in approximately one week or as soon as possible.
Chargeable Services
The following are chargeable services.
Fees are taken from the Ontario Medical Association guidelines.
OHIP WILL NOT COVER THE COST OF REMOVAL OF NON-CANCEROUS SKIN LESIONS, SUCH AS MOLES, CYSTS, SKIN TAGS, SPIDER VEINS, ‘AGE SPOTS’ AND MOST WARTS.
1. Ontario residents without an OHIP card: $40 plus a $10 administration fee
2. Visits for patients who are from out-of-country: approximately $150
3. Telephone advice by a dermatologist: $30 minimum
4. Test results: $40 minimum
No phone call means there is nothing to be concerned about. If you do not wish to pay the fee you may book an appointment with the dermatologist.
5. Absent notes/various forms to be completed by the dermatologist/staff: $20 to $30
6. Transfer of medical records: $65 minimum
7. Photocopy of records for patient use (depends on size of records): $50 minimum
8. Patient requests a copy or fax of lab reports, one to five pages: $5; six or more pages: $1 per page
9. Cosmetic-related procedures not covered by OHIP: prices vary
The Time is Yours
For patients/clients who have cosmetic-related appointments such as laser, microdermabrasion and various types of facial treatments:
The time you book your appointment is yours exclusively. If you are late for your appointment, the time missed will not be subtracted from the next patient’s appointment.
For policies relating to purchased products or services please consult Refund Policy.
Wait Times at Bay Dermatology Centre
You book your appointment weeks, sometimes months in advance. You plan your day around your visit with us, defending the spot in your schedule because you care about your health. Our time together is important to you. You scramble to get to our office on time. Some of you travel great distances. But finally, you get here… and you wait. What are you waiting for? You wouldn’t make your own clients or loved ones wait as long as you sometimes do here. So why are we making you wait after everything you have done to get here on time?
It’s About Access
Our healthcare system in Canada is one of the best in the world. But Canadians, in fact, wait longer and more often for health care than citizens in all other developed countries. In the field of dermatology, the main issue is access. There are over 34 million people in Canada but fewer than 500 dermatologists in the country. This is not a sufficient number to serve this size of population.
This explains why it is so hard to get an appointment. But now that you are here, why are you still waiting for care?
It’s About Quality Care
At the Bay Dermatology Centre, we offer the highest quality of care. A patient, who schedules an appointment for a consult on a particular condition, may at the end of the consult inquire about a separate and unrelated matter. Think about a person who comes in for an examination of a rash but then asks about mole that has been concerning them. Because our objective is to offer the highest quality of care, maximizing healthy outcomes for our patients, we take the time required to address all skin related issues while you are here.
It’s About Time
Scheduling for this kind of unplanned activity is a challenge. Here lies the root cause of your additional waiting time. The average appointment to see a dermatologist is 15 minutes. So to schedule an appointment in advance, we plan on booking 15 minute appointments for each patient. If there was context from a previous appoint to which we have access (we only have access to our own records by law) then that time will be adjusted up if the situation demands it. Think back to the access issue (people waiting months just to get an appointment) and the quality issue (offering the highest quality of service) and we have breaches in our schedule. We’d sooner take the additional time to investigate an issue like potential melanoma with a client then lower the quality of care or decrease access further. The options we contemplate look like this:
- Schedule 15 minute appointments and manage ad hoc requests as they come, or
- Force people making ad hoc requests to schedule a new appointment which might take weeks before they can access a specialist again, or
- Increase the average appointment time to 20 or 30 minutes, and see fewer patients each year further reducing the access to quality health care.
We choose the first option as it has proven to maximize access and quality of care at the expense of a breach in schedule on occasion. The alternatives have a more negative impact on the health of our clients.
- Prepare to be at the office for at least 45 minutes to one hour. Due to the underserviced nature of this specialty and various medical procedures that patients often require, the doctor is, at times, unavoidably delayed.
- Please only bring family members or friends to the appointment if medically necessary to limit numbers in the waiting room.