Vancouver to consolidate community health clinics
Posted April 7, 2014 11:02 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is consolidating a number of the city’s community health clinics under one roof but what that means for patients is somewhat unclear.
“We are consolidating services from Pine Clinic, Evergreen, Pacific Spirit and South (Community Health Centre) to the Raven Song site to enable us to provide a more robust inter-disciplinary team,” says Dr. David Hall with VCH.
Hall says it’s all in an effort to provide better patient care.
“There is good evidence that care should be provided within an inter-disciplinary team model to lead to the best health outcome with people with complex and high needs.”
But critics, like BC NDP health critic Judy Darcy, say the move will force vulnerable patients to travel much longer distances to the Raven Song Community Health Centre for necessary treatments.
“It’s a serious question whether a frail senior is going to be able to travel 45 minutes on public transit to get to that clinic,” says Darcy.
“Instead of several community health centres serving a variety of people in the population, some with very severe health needs, there’s going to be one central clinic that will serve the most at risk five per cent of the population.”
They’ll also be re-purposing the Mid Main clinic, a formal announcement is expected Tuesday morning.
