West 91大黄鸭鈥檚 new mayor says with news the province may announce plans for an urgent primary care centre somewhere in the Central Okanagan early next year, he is stepping up city efforts to have the facility located there.

Gord Milsom said Thursday the issue of a health centre in West 91大黄鸭 has a been a priority for him during his first few weeks on the job and he already has meeting set up with new Interior Health CEO Susan Brown to discuss the matter. Milsom said he is also seeking a meeting with Heath Minister Adrian Dix to directly lobby for the centre.

鈥淭here a great need for an urgent care centre here, not only for West 91大黄鸭 but also for the Westbank First Nation and Peachland,鈥� said Milsom. 鈥淲e鈥檙e doing our best to lobby for it.鈥�

On Wednesday, 91大黄鸭-Lake Country MLA and B.C. Liberal health critic Norm Letnick told the 91大黄鸭 Chamber of Commerce he, 91大黄鸭 West MLA Ben Stewart and 91大黄鸭-Mission, MLA Steve Thomson had all spoken with Dix and believe an announcement about a urgent primary care centre will be made in the first quarter of 2019. He said all three MLAs believe it will be located somewhere in the Central Okanagan.

West 91大黄鸭 has had an urgent care centre as a top priority since shortly after it incorporated 11 years ago.

With Thursday marking the city鈥檚 11 anniversary of incorporation, Milsom said the urgent care centre lobbying effort remains a priority for him and and his new council and he is confident the city has a strong case in calling for such a facility to be located on the west side of Okanagan Lake.

The province announced earlier this year 10 urgent primary care centres will be created across the province, with two in each of B.C.鈥檚 five health authority regions. So far, four centrs have been created under the NDP government鈥檚 plan鈥攐ne each in Vancouver, Surrey, the Victoria area and in Kamloops. A fifth centre, created by the former Liberal government 10 years ago, is located in Parksville on Vancouver Island.

Letnick said creation of a centre in the Central Okanagan would not only alleviate pressure on 91大黄鸭 General Hospital鈥檚 busy emergency department, but also help provide health care service for those without a family doctor.

What a centre would look like here, and the services it would provide, have yet to be determined. The government has said it wants the centres to provide health services to people in need when they need them, either by appointment or as walk-in patients. Existing centres operate during the week and on weekends, and are open in the evenings.

Milsom said with a growing and aging population on the west side of the lake, such a facility is badly needed there. He said the local case is backed up by a report written by former Interior Health official Joanna Konnert in 2013 that said West 91大黄鸭 should continue to lobby the government for improved health services.

Area MLA Ben Stewart said like Letnick and Thomson, he supports creating of an urgent care centre facility in the Central Okanagan, but said he and the other two MLAs were not lobbying for it to be a specific municipality.

However, he said he has heard loud and clear from his constituents that they want to see it located in West 91大黄鸭.

Interior Health, in the late 2000s, wanted to build facility that would have offered urgent health care services in Westbank and even bought land at Elliott Road and Butt Road for construction. But the plan never got off the ground and was eventually shelved after Konnert鈥檚 report came out.

One of her findings was the number of visits to the emergency department of KGH by Westside residents dropped 20 per cent between 2008 and 2012.

Milsom said it was his understanding a new urgent primary care centre would be located in an existing building and offer services in addition to what are now available in West 91大黄鸭, including triage for patients needing to be transferred to KGH.

He said the city has identified five possible locations for a centre in the city. Those locations have not been made public.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 want there to be an announcement that it will be elsewhere (other than West 91大黄鸭),鈥� said Milsom. 鈥淚t will be good for the entire Central Okanagan but we feel we have a strong case for to to be be somewhere in the Greater Westside.鈥�

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