Three new primary care centres will be in the Brentwood/Hastings, Edmonds and Metrotown areas

The urgent care centre will be built in the Edmonds area

The provincial government will be building one new urgent care and three new primary care centres in Burnaby

BURNABY (NEWS 1130) — If you live in Burnaby, there will soon be more places to see a doctor.

The provincial government announced today they will be building three primary care centres and one urgent care centre in the city by May. It’s all part of the province’s plan to make more doctors available for people who don’t have one — there’s 40,000 people just in that community alone, according to Health Minister Adrian Dix.

A new urgent primary care centre on Edmonds is one of five in BC will open in May – @adriandix. He says 30 – 40thousand people in Burnaby are without primary care doctor. This centre will help with that. Will also have addiction specialists, nurse practitioners…#bcpoli — LizaYuzda (@LizaYuzda) March 21, 2019

The new urgent centre will be in the Edmonds area, and the three primary centres will be in Brentood/Hastings, Edmonds and Metrotown areas. The province is also planning to build a fourth in the Lougheed area some time in the future.

The urgent care centre will be the sixth in the province.

Dix says it will take a while to measure how they are working.

“The most significant standard is providing primary care to people who live in our community, attaching people who visit our urgent primary care centres to a primary care provider and providing services outside of regular hours,” he says.

So far, he says the primary care centres opened in the province have seen 20,000 patients.

The details from the province on the latest (6th) urgent primary care (there will be 12 in total) and on new primary care centres. #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/d8Icl20QHt — LizaYuzda (@LizaYuzda) March 21, 2019

But he says it’s early days – the province is not yet a year into the three year plan to expand team-based community care.

The new Burnaby primary care centres are the second group in B.C. The first were in the Tri-Cities.

In Burnaby, about 68 new healthcare providers will be hired over the next three years, including 10 doctors, 10 nurse practicioners, three clinical pharmacists, and 45 nursing and allied health care professionals to run the new centres.

– With files from Lauren Boothby