Old North Lung

About

About Dr. Farquhar

Dr. Donald Farquhar is a respirologist - specialist physician in lung conditions - who has been in practice for over 35 years. He grew up in London, Ontario, and obtained his medical degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He completed his residency education and specialty certifications in internal medicine and respirology at Western University’s teaching hospitals, and later earned a master’s degree in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health, with concentration in measurement and improvement of medical care quality.

In his leisure time, Dr. Farquhar enjoys reading, learning to play guitar and piano, spending time with family and friends, and attending all forms of theatre, cinema, and live music. To stay fit, he likes to walk, cycle, run, and work out on an elliptical trainer. He managed to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2019, and has completed four other marathons in Toronto, Ottawa, and Oregon.

About Our Practice

For the first 30 years of his professional career, Dr. Farquhar practised respirology and internal medicine in a traditional teaching hospital setting, working with teams of residents, medical students and allied health professionals in the care of acutely ill patients on inpatient wards, and ambulatory patients in hospital outpatient clinics.

The significant challenges of the early phase of the COVID pandemic prompted Dr. Farquhar to consider how he might adapt his outpatient practice to better serve the often complex needs, vulnerabilities, anxieties, and mobility challenges of his patients with chronic lung disease.

When he stepped down in 2022 from his roles at Western University’s medical school and teaching hospitals, Dr. Farquhar adopted a multi-site community-based practice that is best described as a ‘distributed care delivery’ model. He sees patients in a variety of settings, which he selects according to patients’ needs, abilities, resources, and home address.

Our practice includes the following sites and modes of care:

Old North Wellness Centre (ONWC)

This is an office practice in central London, which also serves as our practice’s business and mailing address, 775 Waterloo St., Unit 5. The ONWC is accessible by London Transit bus routes and is ideal for patients who live in central and east London. Dr. Farquhar sees patients in this location on Wednesdays.

North London Medical Centre (NLMC)

This is a modern, elevator-accessible, multi-physician clinic and diagnostic testing centre, where Dr. Farquhar sees patients on Thursdays and one Monday per month, in space that he shares with the London Cardiac Institute (LCI). The NLMC is located at 1055 Fanshawe Rd., near Hyde Park Rd., in the most northwestern corner of London.

The NLMC site is suited to those who live in the rapidly growing north and west ends of London, and in the immediately surrounding communities of Ilderton, Komoka and Huron County. Because Fanshawe Rd. is also Ontario Highway 22, the NLMC is accessible to patients who live in Sarnia and in Perth, Oxford and eastern Elgin Counties.

Four Counties Health Services (FCHS)

This clinic is hosted by a small community hospital in the village Newbury, 45 minutes west of London. The name ‘Four Counties’ refers to the fact that the hospital is situated near the intersection of Elgin, Kent, Lambton, and Middlesex Counties. Our clinic at FCHS serves those who live in the hamlets, villages and farms of the Four Counties area, as well as in the nearby urban communities of Chatham and Wallaceburg.

The FCHS clinic provides access to specialty respiratory care for those who otherwise would need to travel to London or Windsor to see a respirologist. Dr. Farquhar, whose teenage summer job as a farm hand left him with a lifelong affinity for the rural and farming life, sees patients at FCHS one to two Fridays per month.

London Inter-Community Health Centre (LIHC)

The LIHC is an inner-city primary care clinic, located at the corner of Dundas and Adelaide Streets, which serves a number of vulnerable populations, including people who are unhoused, living with addiction, seeking refuge or asylum, and/or living at significant socioeconomic disadvantage. Dr. Farquhar sees patients in this clinic – LIHC clients with lung conditions who would find it a significant challenge to make their way to one of our other practice sites – one day every three months.

Home visits

Dr. Farquhar sees selected patients, with their permission, in their homes, usually on a Saturday afternoon, one or two days per month. Home visits provide Dr. Farquhar the opportunity to maintain in-person contact with people who are homebound by severe mobility challenges, or have reached the end-stages of their chronic respiratory condition. A home visit is a special privilege that allows Dr. Farquhar to gain deeper insight into how patients manage from day to day in their own micro-environments, and whether their supports and resources are sufficient to meet their needs.

Virtual care

The widespread adoption of virtual care is one of many lasting innovations that grew out of the challenges faced by our health care system during the COVID pandemic. Dr. Farquhar offers virtual follow-up care, by internet-based video-conference platform, or telephone, to patients with mobility challenges or limited access to transportation, and to those who live outside London and/or do not require on-site physical examination or diagnostic testing during a follow-up visit.

Although in selected circumstances, an initial consultation visit can be conducted by video-conference, an in-person appointment is always preferred for your first meeting with Dr. Farquhar. Our ‘virtual care clinic’ is held on Tuesdays, with occasional virtual visits scheduled on Wednesdays or Fridays.

Your Initial Consultation Visit

What do we mean by "consultation visit?"

Dr. Farquhar serves as a consultant physician, who sees patients at the request of their primary care providers. As a respirologist, his role is to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of such problems as cough, shortness of breath, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pulmonary fibrosis.

Your initial consultation visit with Dr. Farquhar is prompted by a referral letter from your primary care provider. Our goal is to schedule the consultation visit within 2 months of receipt of the referral letter, or sooner if Dr. Farquhar feels the problem is particularly time-sensitive.

What to expect at your consultation visit

During the consultation visit, which is 45 minutes in duration, Dr. Farquhar will take your medical history, conduct a brief physical examination, review available imaging and/or breathing tests, and discuss with you his diagnosis and recommendations for treatment, follow-up, and/or further testing.

What to bring to your consultation visit

We ask that you kindly bring all medications, including inhalers, or an up-to-date list of them, to your consultation visit. It is also helpful if you can come with up-to-date information about current or past medical diagnoses, surgeries, and allergies, if you keep information of that nature in written list form.

How to prepare for your consultation visit

Completing our patient questionnaire, which is forwarded to you along with your consultation appointment notification, will help jog your memory about aspects of your health that Dr. Farquhar will want to explore at your first meeting. You can download the questionnaire here, and complete it on paper. You can bring a paper copy of the completed questionnaire with you to your appointment, or, even better, fill out our online webform ahead of time to us!

Getting to your consultation visit

Detailed instructions to find your way to each of the locations for in-person visits with Dr. Farquhar are outlined below.

Regardless of the location of your visit, please be sure to bring all your medications, including any inhalers (or an updated list of them) with you.

Old North Wellness Centre

Dr. Farquhar’s office at the Old North Wellness Centre is located at 775 Waterloo Street, London ON (on the west side of Waterloo, just north of Oxford Street, beside the corner gas station, and across the street from Rexall Pharmacy). Parking is available in front of, and behind the building, at no charge. The office is accessible by London Transit (‘Plan Your Trip’ at https://www.londontransit.ca/plan-a-trip/schedules/). Please enter by the front door of the building, take the 9-step staircase to the lower level, and proceed to Dr. Farquhar’s office, Unit 5, at the rear and to the left.

Please note that there is no receptionist at this location, so kindly read the signs outside the door carefully, and use the seating available while you wait for Dr. Farquhar to greet you. It is best to plan your arrival no more than 5 minutes before the appointment time. Be sure let us know ahead of time, by email or telephone message, if the 9-step staircase will pose too much of a challenge, so that we can arrange an appointment at one of our other locations.

North London Medical Centre

Dr. Farquhar’s clinic at the North London Medical Centre is located in shared space with the London Cardiac Institute (LCI) at 1055 Fanshawe Road West, London ON. Parking is available in a surface lot behind the building, at a $5.00 flat rate. The North London Medical Centre is accessible by London Transit (‘Plan Your Trip’ at https://www.londontransit.ca/plan-a-trip/schedules/). Please enter through the rear door of the building, and take the elevator to the second floor, Suite 201, and register at the front desk.

Four Counties Health Services

Dr. Farquhar’s clinic is held in the ambulatory care area at Four Counties Health Services, 1824 Concession Drive (County Rd 14), Newbury ON. Parking is available at no charge in a large surface lot on the west side of the hospital. Please access the building through the Emergency Department entrance, and register at the desk immediately ahead and to the right. You will be directed by the registration clerk to the waiting area (and Diagnostic Imaging before that, if a chest x-ray has been requested), where Dr. Farquhar will greet you when he is ready to see you.

London Inter-Community Health Centre

The London Inter-Community Health Centre is located at 659 Dundas Street, on the south side of the street, between Adelaide and Elizabeth Streets, and is accessible by London Transit (‘Plan Your Trip’ at https://www.londontransit.ca/plan-a-trip/schedules/). Please access the building by the Dundas Street entrance, and register at the front desk, where one of the nursing staff will meet you and accompany you to a clinic examining room.

Communicating with your primary care provider after the consultation visit

Dr. Farquhar will summarize his findings and management plan in a 2-to-3 page written report that will be forwarded to your primary care provider. We aim to ensure that our consultation reports are completed and available within 10 days of your appointment. Dr. Farquhar also forwards written updates to your primary care provider after each subsequent follow-up visit.

Follow-up

At the conclusion of your consultation with Dr. Farquhar, he will recommend a time frame for your next visit, and any diagnostic testing that might be helpful.

Frequency of follow-up visits

The length of time that you remain under Dr. Farquhar’s care, and the frequency of follow-up visits, will depend on the nature of the problem for which you have been referred.

For some problems, such as cough, the underlying cause often can be identified and treated successfully over weeks to months, needing only a limited number of follow-up visits. Once the problem is addressed to your satisfaction, Dr. Farquhar will return care to your primary provider. If the problem recurs or worsens, he is available to see you again, by re-referral.

If you are living with a chronic, moderate-to-severe, potentially progressive or disabling lung condition, our practice is to offer indefinite follow-up, with visits every 6 to 12 months, in a shared-care model with your primary provider.

Location of follow-up visits

If Dr. Farquhar needs to repeat aspects of the physical examination or perform a procedure such as an office-based spirometry (breathing) test, we will schedule your follow-up visit as an in-person appointment, usually in the same location as where you were seen in consultation.

If Dr. Farquhar’s re-assessment requires only a conversation about your symptoms and their response to treatment, or discussion of the results of a diagnostic test, we will schedule a ‘virtual’ follow-up visit, either by internet-based video-conference or telephone. This saves you the time and expense of travelling to the clinic when no on-site examination or testing is needed.

Diagnostic tests

If further testing is required, such as a chest x-ray, CT scan of the lungs, pulmonary function tests, or heart tests, either our office staff, or the testing facility itself, will notify you by email, letter, or sometimes telephone, with details of the date, time, and location of testing. You will be notified as soon as this information is known, so there is no need to call or email to ask us for details.

Prescription renewals

Dr. Farquhar will specify multiple refills on any prescription that he writes for you. When the last refill of a series is dispensed, please remind your pharmacist to forward a renewal form by fax to our office, well before you exhaust your supply of medication. Our office requires a 14-day turnaround time on any prescription fax renewal requests, in case Dr. Farquhar is away.