New health-care clinic opens doors to patients in James Bay
Patients lined up to be assessed outside the James Bay Urgent and Primary Care Centre as it opened its doors for the first time.
The Michigan Street centre, located at the former site of the James Bay Community Project, provides a range of primary care delivered by family physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, and mental-health and substance-use clinicians, as well as urgent or walk-in care.
Dr. William Cunningham called the new facility, which opened April 28, “another puzzle piece” to close gaps in the health-care system.
“The idea is that there are two things that really need help at this point in time, and one is finding a family physician or nurse practitioner for patients,” said Cunningham, Island Health’s medical director for community health services in urban Victoria and the department head for primary care.
“So this unit is going to have family practice — family physicians and nurse practitioners working shoulder-toshoulder doing primary care in a team environment with RNs.”
Around 4,000 to 5,000 patients or more should eventually end up attached” to a family physician or nurse practitioner.
The other gap that needs closing is urgent care, which will run into the evenings and be available on weekends and statutory holidays, Cunningham said.
“This complements what walk-in clinics do but the hours are very extended,” he said. “The one reason you want that is that people should not have to go to the emergency department with less-complex things at those times of day and those days of the week.”
Non-emergent issues can include sprains, minor cuts and burns.
The new centre can be part of a larger effort, he said.
“There are other initiatives in Victoria working with the family physicians and what we call our patient-care networks to increase attachment, as well,” he said. “I think there are many excellent family physicians in Victoria and they have to be supported to continue delivering their care.”
The centre will take a few weeks to get up to full speed, and is ideally for people living in the James Bay area. More such centres are planned in the region.
There are similar facilities in Langford and Nanaimo, with the Langford location seeing over 35,000 patients since it opened in October 2018 and the Nanaimo location seeing about 25,000 since its September 2019 opening.