The New Brunswick government says the first of its 30 collaborative health-care clinics – a flagship promise from this past fall’s provincial election – will be in Fredericton.
An expansion of the city’s northside community health clinic (inside Brookside Mall) is expected to be finished this summer, allowing room for 1,600 additional patients who currently don’t have a primary care provider.
Horizon says new patients will be chosen from the current wait list for providers, based on how long they’ve been on the registry and where they live.
For the clinic on Fredericton’s north side, two part-time physicians and two nurses will be hired by June. The new hires will be added to an interdisciplinary team at the clinic, which includes:
- physicians
- a nurse practitioner
- nurses
- administrative support
- a licensed counselling therapist
- a social worker
- a dietitian
- a respiratory therapist
- a pharmacist
- a diabetes educator
The Liberal government’s commitment to complete 10 out of 30 collaborative health-care clinics is at a cost of $30 million as outlined in last month’s provincial budget.
Premier Susan Holt says collaborative health care is her government’s number one priority and “something that we can say with absolute certainty that we will be sticking to.”
“Improving access to care for New Brunswickers is why we got elected,” says Holt.
The collaborative health-care clinics will operate differently in each community where established, with some expanding from existing clinics and others being built from the ground up.
“You’re going to see different examples of family health teams all across the province… because we need to work with what we have,” says Dr. Ravneet Comstock, the Horizon Health Networks’ physician program lead.
The Holt government’s goal, as outlined in January’s State of the Province address, is to improve the number of New Brunswickers who have a primary care provider from 79 per cent to 85 per cent by 2028.
Horizon Health CEO Margaret Melanson says the health authority is “targeting 2029 as a realistic timeline” to match every person in the health authority with a team equipped to meet their primary health care needs.
According to a survey from the New Brunswick Health Council, as many as 180,000 New Brunswickers don’t have a primary health-care provider.
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