Vernon has a population of roughly 47,000 people but almost half of residents are said to be without a family doctor.
“We’re hovering in and around 20 to 23,000 people that do not have access to primary care,” said Leigha Horsfield, executive director of Community Futures. “It seems like there’s a great need to support seniors who are unattached to a doctor, maternity and obstetric patients that are unattached to a doctor, in general, people in our community that are that are unattached.”
The situation made especially challenging in the North Okanagan city after Vernon’s only walk-in clinic closed its doors for good last fall.
“The need was high before it closed and need is currently high,” said Horsfield. “It’s going to be high for some time to come.”
Enhancing health services and helping people find a family physician is now a cause that Community Futures is taking up.
The non-for profit organization typically works to promote economic development but Horsfield said you can’t have a healthy economy if the same can’t be said for health infrastructure.
“Health and economy are tied, you really can’t separate the two,” she told Global News. “So if we’re looking to attract skilled labor to our community, and it’s maybe hard to find housing. If you also then can’t find access to primary care, it’s a real barrier. Social determinants of health like employment are tied to health.”
Community Futures is developing a proposal to submit to the Health Ministry to create a community-based health clinic.
“We’re developing a proposal for community health clinic, which is a primary care clinic that would provide longitudinal care, the goal is to attach people who do not have an attachment right now to a physician or primary care provider,” Horsfield said.
The proposal is in the early development stage and it’s not yet known how much money Community Futures would be seeking to get the project off the ground.
Horsfield said the clinic would include allied health.
“As you can imagine , we are in the process of imagining it and putting together what it could be, but I think the vision is that it is a multi-use space that is in collaboration with existing health services in the community. With community need, we would have a community advisory that would really help to ensure that whatever services are being offered at this center, continually meet the needs of community,” Horsfield said.
In an email to Global News , the Ministry of Health said it is aware of the work underway by the community of Vernon to get the clinic in place and that it anticipates receiving the proposal on June 3.
As for how long an approval process may take, the ministry stated: “Once unsolicited applications are received, they are prioritized with other similar applications.”
It added “there is no average length of time it takes for the Ministry to review and potentially approve the creation of a Community Health Centre (CHC), as each centre is designed to meet the needs of a specific community. Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are the main forum for primary-care planning and that occurs in partnership with the community. The application for a potential CHC is considered in the context of the primary care investments already being made by the Ministry and its PCN partners, for example the Vernon Urgent and Primary Care Centre (UPCC) that opened in 2019.”
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