The Promoting Access and Care through Centres of Excellence (PACE) program’s efforts to better utilize telemedicine have expanded to the Thunder Bay area. Since moving to Thunder Bay last month, Dr. Petros Zezos has established his gastroenterology practice at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. Dr. Zezos’ will help people in the area living with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis access telemedicine services.
Through existing provincial telemedicine infrastructure, patients who might have difficulty finding inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) specialists locally will be able to have a virtual consultation with a member of the multidisciplinary IBD team at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
Dr. Zezos is a gastroenterologist and hepatologist with a long-term interest in IBD. Most recently, he served as an Advanced IBD Fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital, and completed a Master Teacher Program in the Department of Medicine at University of Toronto, where his project focused on e-Learning applications in IBD.
“I believe the presence of Dr. Zezos in the Thunder Bay community will help us to reach our goal of improving access to high quality care in remote regions of Ontario using the telemedicine network,” says Dr. Geoff Nguyen of Mount Sinai Hospital. “Patients can receive in-person care and monitoring by Dr. Zezos while having access to the resources of a leading IBD Centre of Excellence.”
On April 10, Dr. Zezos met with people in the community who are impacted by IBD. With the support of the Thunder Bay Chapter of Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, Dr. Zezos and Registered Nurse Shelley Bouchard held a question and answer session. They fielded questions from the audience about treatment options, research directions, nutrition, and medicinal marijuana.
In addition to introducing the community to Dr. Zezos, PACE researchers at the event were able to learn more about the needs of patients in Thunder Bay. Those stated needs will help the PACE team improve the quality of care delivery for IBD patients across Canada.
For more information about the PACE program and its sites across Canada, visit crohnsandcolitis.ca/pace.