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Island's seventh Urgent and Primary Care Centre opens at Gorge Road Hospital

Centre at 63 Gorge Rd. East is open to anyone who needs care for a condition requiring attention within 12 to 24 hours and who does not have a family physician or nurse practitioner.
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The new Gorge Road Urgent and Primary Care Centre. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST

The Island’s seventh Urgent and Primary Care Centre quietly opened its doors in Victoria on Monday.

The new UPCC at Gorge Road Hospital — open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday — is the sixth such facility in the capital region. UPCCs previously opened in Langford, Esquimalt, James Bay, Saanich and downtown Victoria, while another is in Nanaimo.

The centre at 63 Gorge Rd. East is open to anyone who needs care for a medical condition requiring attention within 12 to 24 hours and who does not have a family physician or nurse practitioner.

It will offer diagnosis and treatment of minor acute illnesses such as suspected infections that require urgent attention.

It will also offer wound care, sexually transmitted disease testing, pregnancy testing and support, cervical-cancer screening, vaccines, chronic-disease management, harm reduction, removal of stitches, and ­prescribed injections, according to Island Health.

Urgent and Primary Care Centres, intended to help address overburdened hospital emergency rooms and a shortage of family doctors, have come under increasing scrutiny as they struggle to meet patient demand, attach patients to family doctors, or hire enough doctors or nurse practitioners.

Patients have complained that access is difficult, as appointments fill up early in the day.

In the February budget, the province pegged $57 million over three years in operating costs for an additional 10 urgent and primary care centres in B.C. by 2024-2025, which would bring the total number of UPCCs to 50.

The first UPCC on the Island was officially opened by Premier John Horgan and Health Minister Adrian Dix in Langford in October 2018. The Esquimalt centre opened in December 2021.

ceharnett@timescolonist.com

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