Interior Health says a pair of Urgent and Primary Care Centres in Kamloops will be able to take around 366 appointments a day when fully operational.

The health authority and the provincial government are spending nearly $7-million on the two facilities, with the majority of the money – $5.4 million – meant for a new UPCC at Northills Mall.

Interior Health’s Director of Business Operations Dianne Kostachuk says that new Urgent and Primary Care Centre – which is expected to be open by the end of this year – will help ease the pressure of the existing facility at Royal Inland Hospital.

“Once its up and running and fully operational, the anticipated volume is about 85,000 patient visits a year, or about 231 per day,” Kostachuk told the Thompson Regional Hospital District Board Thursday.

“[It’ll be] a team based care model so physicians, nurses, social workers etc. providing urgent care to attached and unattached patients that don’t require emergency room care.”

Another $1.55 million will go towards increasing the capacity of the existing UPCC from 105 to 135 patients a day.

“What we’re facing is a space constraint, so this will allow us to expand and potentially take up to 30 additional appointments per day,” Kostachuk said.

The Thompson-Regional Hospital District will cover about $2.75 million of the total cost of those two projects. It is part of the $9.2 million it will spend on major capital projects across the area this year.

Councillor Bill Sarai asked whether the increase in capacity to the existing UPCC at Royal Inland Hospital will allow the facility to expand its current operating hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.

“Are we going to be taking patients earlier than 9’o clock? Are we going to be open later?” Sarai said.

He also wondered whether the space constraints were because people who had family doctors were also using the clinic to access care instead of going to their doctors.

“Is there not a criteria there in place that [the UPCC] should not be your go to place if you have your own physician and that this should be only used by people that don’t have a doctor?” Sarai asked.

“Maybe that is part of the problem that we’re seeing here. Its getting over used.”

Karen Cooper, Interior Health’s Executive Director of Clinical Operations said the health authority is working on improving people’s access to their own doctors, if they have one, noting though the health authority will never turn away a person if they come in seeking medical attention.

“We won’t distinguish between unattached and attached as far as turning folks away,” Cooper said. “What we are doing is working with closely with our Division of Family Practice partners. In fact Kamloops is a pilot site in B.C. around after-hours enhanced access for those who already have a family practice provider.”

“What that will enable is folks to be really clear about where they go to access urgent episodic care after hours, and hopefully we end up with a system where the Urgent and Primary Care Centres are mostly for the unattached and we have a mechanism for the attached to be able to access care same day.”