Interior Health has confirmed they expect work on the new Urgent and Primary Care Center for the Kamloops North Shore should be done by this summer, with expectations the new facility will be operational toward the end of 2024.
Executive Director of Clinical Operations for Kamloops, Lisa Zetes Zenatta, has confirmed to Radio NL the new UPCC at the North Hills Mall will be a separate facility, with its own staffing.
“This is it’s own stand-alone center. It is a second Urgent and Primary Care Center, which means we are looking to increase significantly the capacity. We are already at full capacity of operations [at the UPCC at Royal Inland Hospital],” said Zetes Zenatta. “We are not looking at shifting our nurses and techs and MOA’s. We will be posting new positions for them.”
Zetes Zenatta also confirming the 3.2 million dollars Interior Health has earmarked for the new UPCC is simply for construction costs, saying the overall facility is going to have a much higher price tag for annual operations.
“This is going to be net-new capacity, not a shift from one location to another,” said Zetes Zenatta. “We’re in early days in the staff planning. But what I can tell you is that I’m hopeful that we will see double the appointments available.”
A request for proposals submitted for tender by Interior Health in late November indicates the location for the new UPCC in the North Hills Mall will be roughly 800 square meters in size.
The large-scale work space is where medical personnel would provide non-emergency medical care, with expectations it could open in about a year’s time.
“The project will support two guiding Primary Care goals from Ministry of Health,” states the RFP, which closed on December 22nd.
“Enhancing the quality and value of the care experienced both by individual patients and specific populations; and improving the performance of the health care system both in terms of the quality of clinical services, linked to meaningful clinical outcomes, as well as improving the overall system efficiency and productivity based on health outcomes achieved per dollar spent,” stated the RFP.