A new integrated health-care centre will be built in the heart of Sooke village by 2025, former premier John Horgan announced Thursday.
The clinic will consolidate what’s available now, including the West Coast Medical Clinic, and then more than double the number of doctors, nurses and counsellors working in the area to about 40 from roughly 19.
Funding is in place for the new staff, who will be added incrementally over the next few years.
The single site housing a community health centre and urgent and primary care centre at 6671 Wadams Way will be the first of its kind in the Island Health region.
The new centre will be community governed and operated by the Sooke Region Communities Health Network. The capital cost has not yet been disclosed.
“This is going to be an integrated community system that has been driven by the docs,” said Horgan, speaking at the new site in Sooke on Thursday. “We will have culturally safe supports, mental-health support, substance-abuse services, and every other primary-care initiative you can imagine.”
The team is expected to include family physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, mental-health and substance-use workers and other allied health providers.
The new staff will supplement the existing staff working at West Coast Family Medicine Clinic.
There are currently about 19 health-care workers, including 11 family physicians in the clinic, working with Island Health staff in the area.
The Health Ministry is providing funding to hire an Indigenous cultural-safety liaison to support the project while planning is underway.
“It will be delivered right here — longitudinal care, episodic care, you name it, it will happen here with extended hours,” said Horgan.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said integrating physicians into a community-based primary-care model means more time for patients, more patients accessing health-care services and less administrative burden for practitioners.
“This is part of our continuing work to build increased and improved access to primary health care for people in Sooke,” said Dix. “This is a proposal that comes forward from the local community.”
A new payment plan for family doctors that rolled out last month is expected to help attract new doctors to the area, he said.
As of Thursday, 2,317 family physicians had signed on to the new payment model — more than 50 per cent of practising family doctors in the province. The model offers an alternative to the fee-for-service arrangement where doctors receive a set fee per patient visit.
An additional 237 doctors who weren’t under the fee code have also signed onto the new model.
Dix said he’s very “confident” of attracting needed staff to the community.
The new centre will be part of the Western Communities Primary Care Network.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: letters@timescolonist.com
