New urgent and primary care centre planned for growing Port Coquitlam

BY ROSE LEUNG
After relying on out-of-city hospitals for years, Port Coquitlam residents will soon be able to receive local urgent medical care. Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West announced at his Coffee with the Mayor event on October 7 that Fraser Health is opening a long-awaited urgent and primary care centre in Fremont Village. The facility will be supporting a growing city of over 60,000 residents. 

“It does provide a good level of care. You know, a step below a hospital. But at this point, it’s just so much desperation. It’s like, give us anything,” West said.

Fraser Health designates these types of facilities for patients needing “urgent care for non-life-threatening medical concerns that need attention within 12 to 24 hours”. 

According to Health Link BC, only four walk-in clinics are available within Port Coquitlam. With the closest hospital access being Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody and Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, residents face no local options to turn to. Senior resident Esperanza Vargas said she faced difficulties finding a replacement after her local family doctor’s retirement. 

“Our doctor retired. And we don’t have any family doctors. We couldn’t go here because all the doctors were busy. So, somebody told us about this one in Pitt Meadows and they were accepting new patients… but you have to ask for an appointment and everything.”

The facility is expected to open in the next couple of months to address growing demand. Having access to a local option is expected to help ease the overcrowding at other hospitals, including Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody.

Pradeep Mynam, a local resident, said commuting outside the city is not too inconvenient because the Tri-Cities are close to each other, but described his recent visit to Eagle Ridge Hospital as “exhaustingly long.”

“Apparently only one doctor was working that night and the lines were very long. It took almost nine hours to meet the doctor — very nice, but heavily understaffed, I felt,” Mynam said. “Hopefully having one in PoCo might reduce the burden on Eagle Ridge and bring down the wait times.”

Vargas, who lives near Fremont Village, said she is expecting a lot from the new facility. She and her husband have not been able to get a family doctor nearby, and their walk-in clinic has stopped taking new patients. Instead, they must book appointments with a doctor in Pitt Meadows. The urgent and primary care centre is expected to fill this gap for residents who need non-life-threatening urgent care instead of having to rely on hospital emergency rooms.

“I have been to the one in Port Moody, close to Rocky Point. We didn’t wait more than an hour and a doctor saw my husband. So it was a really good experience. At this age, it gets scary to get sick, so if we can have that here, it will be really nice.”

West said the city has been focused on advocating for issues beyond the municipal level, as health care is handled provincially by the Fraser Health Authority.

“The Tri-Cities, and everywhere quite frankly, has gone through a significant period of population growth,” he said. “I can just assure you that this wasn’t the provincial government waking up all of a sudden one day. It was because we were in their face aggressively, repeatedly, saying that this community needs something.”

Regarding concerns about staffing, West said these centres are generally run primarily by registered nurses, with physicians as well, based on his experience with other urgent and primary care centres. However, the exact staffing details for Port Coquitlam have not been confirmed.

Fraser Health declined a request for an interview but provided a written statement:

“We continuously work with our partners and communities to evaluate and enhance our health services throughout the region. We do not have any updates at this time regarding new services in Port Coquitlam.”