As of July 1st, 2015 Naturopathic Doctors have come under new provincial government regulation. This has been in the works for about the past 10 years, so it's quite exciting for Naturopathic Doctors.
What does this mean for you? Not much initially. But in the near future there will be some advances in my practice that I want to share with you. Naturopathic Doctors now have more testing that we can request - though it is still paid out of pocket for. If you don't have a family doctor, or your family doctor isn't being cooperative or if you simply prefer to do bloodwork through me - we can now order more bloodwork to get information about your condition and to rule things out. Another exciting change is that I will soon be able to prescribe dessicated thyroid medications and bioidentical hormones! There is a pharmacology exam that I have just started studying for and will hopefully complete the course & exam by the new year. My goal is that as of 2016 I will be able to prescribe thyroid and bioidentical hormones to complement my current practice.
Unfortunately, the one thing that I am no longer allowed to do is in-office finger prick food sensitivity testing (don't ask why the government would take away that harmless thing!), but instead I now send people with a kit to a local Toronto LifeLabs location where the staff there take your blood and send it away for testing. Essentially, it's just the same thing but a little bit more inconvenient to you!
Here is a link to the news release about the Naturopathic changes -
http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/ontarios-naturopathic-doctors-providing-greater-access-to-primary-healthcare-for-ontarians-518005071.html
If you have any questions about it, please don't hesitate to let me know!
