The Houston Health Centre is planning renovations this summer as they reorganize into a Primary Care Home.
A Primary Care Home brings professionals from different fields together into one area, and they work as a team to address patient’s needs and complex issues.
Northern Health is renovating the front of the Houston Health Centre this summer, said Health Service Administrator Cormac Hikisch.
They are setting up an office for inter-professional care to the left of the main clinic entrance.
Recruited doctors will work out of that primary care office, where the mental health and addictions offices are now.
Hikisch says renovations will allow space for two doctors offices, two treatment rooms and a small waiting space.
The renovation is a summer project.
“My goal is in the next eight to twelve weeks, we actually start knocking some walls down,” Hikisch said.
Houston Health Centre Coordinator Sally Sullivan says they are already relocating offices.
“We are incorporating home support workers into our residential care unit so that their space can be part of the renovated area with the doctor’s clinic,” she said.
“We are also moving our home care nurse so that she is integrated with the urgent care area and the residential and respite areas.”
These changes follow a Houston Health Review conducted by Northern Health last year. They released five recommendations last February about ways to improve Houston’s health services.
Among those recommendations, they advised the Houston Health Centre be changed into a Primary Care Home with an inter-professional care team.
Sullivan says the team includes urgent care and home care nurses, public and mental health, doctors.
Northern Health is also hiring a Care in the Right Place Coordinator to support the changes to integrated health services in Houston, Smithers and Hazelton.
NH Public Affairs Officer Jonathon Dyck says Sue Livingston will be the coordinator and will work full-time April 2015 to March 2016.
Northern Health is moving towards a primary care home model in all communities, said Doctor Geoff Appleton, Northwest Medical Director.
“This type of change will appeal to new graduates,” he said.
“I’m hoping that this move will be very positive for recruitment.”
