Area for new urgent and primary care centre in Rutland on Highway 33 W. (Photo credit: Google)

By Pete McIntyre

health care

New urgent primary-care centre announced for Rutland

Mar 23, 2023 | 3:15 PM

The B.C. government has announced plans to open a new urgent and primary care centre in the Rutland area this fall.

The centre, at 110 Highway 33 W, will provide urgent primary-care services to people living in the community who need to see a health-care provider within 12 to 24 hours, but do not require going to the emergency department. That includes patients with sprains, cuts, high fevers and minor infections. Starting in fall 2023, care will be available from 9:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m., seven days a week.

The facility will also help attach more patients to the clinic to provide ongoing team-based primary-care services, including mental health.

“This new facility will make it easier for more residents to access the health-care services they need in our community,” Harwinder Sandhu, Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ Services and Long-Term Care, said. “We are committed to keeping up the hard work of building out capacity, so our health-care system continues to become stronger.”

It is anticipated that the health-care team will include 31.3 full-time-equivalent jobs, including family doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, physiotherapists and life-skills workers.

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Interior Health will operate the centre.

Loyal Wooldridge, chair of the Central Okanagan Regional Hospital District, said the new care centre will provide much needed health-care services in the fast-growing urban centre of Rutland.

“The regional hospital district fully supports every effort to elevate health services closer to where residents live. We are so pleased to see that the province is continuing to invest in facilities to keep up with growth here, and we look forward to realizing positive results in the fastest-growing community in Canada,” Wooldridge said.

With the opening of the Rutland facility, there will be 32 urgent primary care centres operating in the province, with nine in the Interior Health region. The other UPCCs in the region are Vernon, Kamloops, Kelowna, Castlegar, West Kelowna, Cranbrook, Penticton and Ashcroft.