Medical Director brings perspective
In the seven years that Dr. Alice Klinkhoff has been Medical Director of The Arthritis Society, there’s been an astonishing advance in treatment. You can label the difference as “pre-2000” and “post-2000,” explains Dr. Klinkhoff—and the difference is due to the new biological response modifiers for treating arthritis.
“Biologics are a miracle drug, there’s no doubt about it. And you don’t get miracles all that often.” With that kind of endorsement from the medical community and TAS’s medical director, it’s no wonder that The Arthritis Society pushed with such vigour for the high costs of biologics, namely Remicade and Enbrel, to be covered under the provincial Pharmacare plan. When that coverage was approved almost two years ago, Dr. Klinkhoff was among the first to be cheering. “Remicade has literally changed the lives of people with rheumatoid arthritis overnight.”
The perspective of a rheumatologist like Dr. Klinkhoff who sees arthritis patients daily is invaluable for The Arthritis Society. Now a volunteer position since the Mary Pack Arthritis Program became a responsibility of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, the TAS medical director can offer medical input on treatment issues and patient care issues that would not otherwise be easily accessible. And Dr. Klinkhoff certainly knows the issues.
Not only is she a practicing rheumatologist, but she also serves as medical director for the Mary Pack Arthritis Program (MPAP), oversees the gold clinic at MPAP with its 250 patients and, as of March 10, is one of the rheumatologists on site at the Fraser Arthritis Centre, the new arthritis resource centre opened by TAS last fall in Langley.
“The number one issue we are facing is access to joint replacement surgery,” she says. The Arthritis Society is doing a good job with advocacy, creative solutions and with building effective relationships with the government, she explains, “but politics is politics and economics is economics. We haven’t been dealing with stable funding.”
However, it’s not all bad news, as she quickly points out. Scientific inquiry into the nature of the immune system because of HIV, AIDS, cancer and transplantation research has helped greatly, and provided better understanding of the natural history of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as a disease of the immune system. “That’s led to the concept that RA is a very serious disease and merits serious attention.”
Rheumatology and the well-being of people with arthritis continues to be a passion for TAS’s medical director, in spite of the long days and the many after-hours volunteer meetings. “When I was training, I could see even then how much difference good medical treatment made in the lives of RA patients. I don’t think there’s any other non-surgical specialty where treatment has such an impact.”
