Urgent and Primary Care Centres

Urgent and Primary Care Centres provide a flexible resource to meet the urgent and primary health care need, primarily in large urban centres where a higher percentage of the population is unable to find or access a regular family doctor or nurse practitioner. As a resource to support communities, Urgent and Primary Care Centres are one of the mechanisms to immediately address the urgent and ongoing care needs of all patients within a community.

Urgent and Primary Care Centres are open to all patients in select communities. For example, they may become the regular clinic for patients without a family doctor or nurse practitioner until another practice or provider within the community can be identified. Urgent and Primary Care Centres also provide alternative care options for patients with a regular family doctor or nurse practitioner often unable to make same-day or next day appointments, and are designed to ensure continuity of care by communicating the relevant information back to a patient’s regular primary care provider.

Urgent and Primary Care Centres provide better access to same-day, urgent, non-emergency health care, including in the evening and on weekends. They provide an alternative to visiting emergency departments for issues that do not need to be seen in a hospital. For example, patients who require medical attention within 12 to 24 hours for something like a sprain, minor cut or burn can visit an Urgent and Primary Care Centre.

Alliance of Information & Referral Systems (AIRS) / 211 LA County taxonomy is the data classification used for all HealthLink BC directory data, including this Urgent and Primary Care Centres data set (https://www.airs.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1). AIRS taxonomy and data definitions are protected by Copyright by Information and Referral Federal of Los Angeles County, Inc. (https://211taxonomy.org/subscriptions/#agreement)