B.C. to build urgent care centre in West Kelowna
Health Minister gives news straight to council
The news that West Kelowna is getting a new urgent and primary care centre was delivered directly Tuesday to city councillors by Health Minister Adrian Dix.
A late addition to the agenda vaguely indicated Dix would provide a “health update” via a phone call to councillors at the outset of their regular bi-weekly meeting.
“The new West Kelowna UPCC will offer people comprehensive, team-based health care, closer to home,” Dix said.
Scheduled to open in November, the centre will be located at the Westsridge mall, at the corner of Main Street and Elliott Road in downtown Westbank. Its hours of operation will be 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Westside community leaders have campaigned for years to get an urgent care centre in the region, now home to about 50,000 people. Seven years ago, the city even hired a former top Interior Health official on a contract to make the case to the government there was a need to improve health services on the Westside.
Having such a centre on the Westside, local officials have said, would lessen the need for many people to drive across the Bennett bridge into Kelowna for urgent medical attention.
The centres are designed to provide enhanced medical care, above what’s available in a typical walk-in clinic, reduce pres
sure on hospital emergency rooms, and better connect people without family doctors to a wide range of health services.
Centre staff include doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, respiratory therapists and physiotherapists.
Dix opened an urgent and primary care centre in January at the Capri Mall on Gordon Drive in Kelowna. Many communities with smaller populations than West Kelowna already have an urgent care centre, including Summerland, Oliver and Princeton.
Eighteen such centres are already open around B.C.
This past February, IH president Susan Brown told West Kelowna city officials they could expect an update on plans for a Westside urgent and primary care centre by April. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic likely delayed that schedule, leaving the matter in limbo until Dix’s announcement at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Nearby Peachland, a town of 5,400 people, lost its only doctor’s office last year.