SURGICAL TELE-ADVICE SERVICES RESUME

Six Specialist LINK surgical tele-advice services that have been temporarily unavailable in recent months are now back online, effective Monday, October 25.

With COVID-19 creating additional pressure on surgical staffing, some of the six surgical sub-specialty tele-advice lines were not available this fall and were consolidated into one general surgery line at the start of October. The following six services are now available again, Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Colorectal surgery

• Endocrine surgery

• General surgery

• Hepatobiliary

• Surgical oncology

• Upper GI Bariatrics

Requesting Specialist LINK tele-advice is simple: Visit specialistlink.ca and click on the desired speciality or sub-specialty. Enter a direct phone number or cell and have the patient’s personal health number at hand. Calls are returned within one hour. Tele-advice can also be requested by calling 403-910-2551.

For more information about what you can call about, or additional resources, please consult our tele-advice guide.

Make the most of your call

To make the most of tele-advice, please leave a direct number or cell phone for your call and limit patient-related questions to one patient per call. Allow an hour for a call-back – please don’t try submitting another request after 30 minutes. If you are working with a resident we recommend that you, as a preceptor, should also be on the call. This is important for billing reasons. Please just alert the consultant and ensure they are aware of this.

If you have any problems connecting with Specialist LINK tele-advice, please email [email protected] or contact the Specialist LINK administrator at 403-910-2551 (extension 0).