Horizon Health has unveiled what the Holt government is calling the first of 30 promised collaborative care clinics that aim to transform the delivery of primary care in New Brunswick.
Horizon’s existing clinic on Fredericton’s north side will expand this summer to take on 1,600 more patients using a “family health team” model developed by the health authority.
It will give patients access to an even broader range of health professionals within the clinic, who will be able to treat more problems and steer more people away from expensive emergency care at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital.
“If I take care of a patient well in my practice, the chance of them ending up in the emergency department for preventable issues is very, very small,” said Dr. Ravneet Comstock, who is helping oversee new primary care models for Horizon.
The Fredericton Northside Community Health Centre team will expand this summer to take on 1,600 more patients.
In last fall’s election Premier Susan Holt promised to establish 30 collaborative care clinics across the province by 2028. The government expects 10 of them to be set up by March 31, 2026.
Some of those collaborative clinics would be expansions of existing clinics, she made clear at the time.
Holt has also promised to increase the number of New Brunswickers with access to a doctor or nurse practitioner to 85 per cent by 2028 from the current 79 per cent.
Horizon Health CEO Margaret Melanson made an even bolder commitment at Monday’s announcement.
“We are targeting 2029 as a realistic timeline to match all people living in areas we serve with a family health team that is equipped to meet their primary care needs,” she said.
Health Minister John Dornan, a doctor who said he got into politics last year to address primary care, later told reporters that making sure “all people” have access to primary care was more of an aspirational objective.
The two health authorities “are dreaming, are planning, are hoping for something better” than 85 per cent, said Dornan, a former Horizon CEO.
“That’s the difference. We set a benchmark that we know we will meet. Our CEOs are visionary, they’re hopeful, and they have people on the ground who can aim higher than that.”
Not all of the promised 30 collaborative care clinics will follow Horizon’s family health team model, and not all will be run by the Horizon or Vitalité regional health authorities.
Others may be clinics in municipally owned buildings or operated by doctors directly.
Besides doctors and nurse practitioners, the Fredericton Northside Community Health Centre.also includes counsellors, social workers, dietitians, respiratory therapists, diabetes educators and others.
It will soon move into a new space, in the same shopping mall, that is better suited for its expanded role.
Melanson said that through the triaging of patients in emergency departments, Horizon estimates that 30 per cent of people who show up there could be helped by a primary care clinic if they had access.
In the future, a triage nurse will be able to offer to arrange appointments for those patients at a clinic, often the next day.
The clinic on Fredericton’s north side will contact patients now on the provincial waiting list who live in that part of the city to register them for the 1,600 new clinic spots.
To measure whether the clinic is achieving the objective, Horizon will also track whether there’s a reduction in the number of people from those postal codes showing up at the emergency department.
The government added $30 million to the health care budget this year to fund the first 10 collaborative care clinics.
