A new Urgent Primary Care Centre has opened for residents of the Comox Valley.

The facility will be temporarily located at the Comox Valley Nursing Centre at 615 10 Street and give people the chance to seek care for urgent matters that don't necessarily need emergency room care. The UPCC is open into the evenings every day, and people can seek care within 12 to 24 hours for things like cuts, wounds, skin conditions, mild infections, moderate back or abdominal pain, minor injuries and depression.

Following the success of local recruitment efforts, the local primary care network and the new payment model for physicians, the Comox Valley has seen an additional 15,000 people become attached to a primary-care provider. This new facility will help fill the gaps, giving people who aren't attached to family doctors a place to receive continued care.

"This is a very good news announcement that means if you're injured ... and it's not quite serious enough to go to the emergency room, you don't have to go to the emergency room," said B.C. Premier David Eby at the announcement of the clinic in July. "Come get the care you need for the bumps, scrapes, and cuts of everyday life. That takes pressure off of the emergency room. If someone shows up at the emergency room that has more complex needs and they need support, there will be a space here for them to get the care that they need."

The facility also gives ER doctors a place to discharge patients and ensure that they are able to continue care after their acute needs are met.

"When we have someone with a long-term chronic condition, they can have an acute, really scary episode where they call the ambulance and are taken to the emergency room. If they don't have the family doctor, they get treated ... and sent back into the community until their next emergency," Eby said. "This centre means that people who don't have those family doctors ... they get connected to this centre, to a physician or nurse who monitors and supports them."

"It's hard to discharge someone from the hospital not knowing where they're going," said Dr. Alfredo Tura, a doctor who works at the new UPCC. "This will provide that temporary continued care."

The facility is one of a number that have been opened across Vancouver Island and the province.

"Since the implementation of our primary-care strategy in 2018, we've opened 35 UPCCs serving approximately 2.7 million people in B.C. who needed urgent, episodic care and treatment," said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. "By establishing these UPCCs that offer team-based care services, our government is investing in improved access to urgent and primary care, so people can be cared for close to home, reducing the strain on other health-care services and building stronger communities."

The province's strategy also looks at building capacity in smaller, rural communities like Port Hardy, which has seen emergency room closures for years due to staffing shortages. Eby said that part of the solution is increasing training and incentives for health care workers to head to those more rural communities.
"It's part of a process of using the healthcare professionals we have more effectively and trying to get motivated to those smaller communities," Eby said. If we're truly going to solve this problem, we have to be training up people do that work for the long term."

The clinic is not a drop in clinic, and appointments are needed, but people can self-refer to the clinic for urgent primary-care needs. Patients requiring laboratory testing beyond simple specimen collection will be provided with requisitions for lab tests at nearby laboratories. At the current, temporary location there will be 18 full-time equivalent providers, and a release from the province says that "once established at its larger, permanent location, the team will more than double."

The province invested $168,200 for improvements to the current, temporary site, as well as funding for the staffing of the facility.

Those who need an appointment can call 250-331-8099.