3 new memory clinics now open to help New Brunswickers with dementia

A non-profit group is opening three new clinics in southeastern New Brunswick to help people with dementia.

MINT, which stands for multi-specialty interprofessional team, is opening memory clinics in Moncton, Sackville and Riverside-Albert. The group already operates one in Miramichi.

The clinics are aimed at helping people with dementia, which includes Alzheimer's disease, who are dealing with the early stages of memory loss.

Dr. Stephanie Urquhart, who helped develop the MINT clinics in the province, said these places will augment work already being done by the provincial health system, but where timely access may be an issue.

"The wait times to get into our specialist clinics in Canada can be very long, sometimes months, even years in some cases," said Urquhart.

She said the goal is to offer patients help from a variety of sources, not just primary care physicians.

"When they come to see us, they may see a nurse, a social worker — they may see a physiotherapist," said Urquhart.

"We work with the families, we work with the patient … We do an interview, get to know about a patient's social history to get to know who's in the family, what supports do they have, what areas are they struggling with."

State of the province

According to the latest numbers from Statistics Canada, New Brunswick has a dementia rate of 1,200 for every 100,000 residents.

But that number is forecast to rise significantly, with a report from the Alzheimer Society of Canada indicating that the province will see an 89 per cent increase in people living with dementia between 2020-2050.

And some groups think the province should be doing more to deal with the issue.

The Higgs government held consultations in 2019 on a provincial dementia strategy. The province is still without one five years later. (Radio-Canada)

A 2022 report from CanAge called out the province for not having a dementia strategy, even though consultations were held to formulate one in 2019.

The report said the province is not considered "dementia ready," and the province "has not made dementia a public health priority."

CBC News has reached out to the Department of Health for an update on the dementia strategy.

Clinics promising

Urquhart said the clinics are still in the soft-opening phase and are only open one day a month, but that could change after they get more established.

Patients must be referred to the clinic by a primary care physician.

MINT operates more than 120 clinics in Ontario, and Urquhart said the data coming out of them is promising.

"We're seeing that patients' … transition to long-term care is delayed. We're seeing that patients are having less visits to our emergency departments, there's less hospitalizations," said Urquhart.

"We're seeing lots of downstream effects from these clinics."