News

The Northern Health Connections program will run on a modified schedule starting December 17th, leading up to a holiday season break.

NH Connections provides transportation for clients travelling to non-emergent health services outside their home communities. A variety of routes connect communities across northern B.C., along with service to Vancouver. Demand for the service typically drops over the holiday season as fewer people book health care appointments.

Northern Health’s Board of Directors recognized two retiring long-time members at its latest regular meeting held in Prince George this week.

Director, Ben Sander from Dawson Creek, and Director, Maurice Squires from the Nisga’a Valley, have been members of the NH Board since 2012, and their terms expire December 31. Both were recognized by board chair Colleen Nyce for service to health care in the North.

The Northern Health Board of Directors examined significant differences between the 2017 and 2018 wildfire season impacts on Northern Health services at its latest meeting in Prince George.

A preliminary review of the 2018 wildfire season found that lessons learned in 2017, as Northern Health supported Interior Health by accepting evacuated patients, helped our health authority navigate the direct impacts of this summer’s wildfire activity services within the region.

Residents of Fort St. James and the surrounding area will have better access to local health care with the addition of new full-time primary care physicians in the region.

Working in partnership with the Tl’azt’en Nation, Nak’azdli Whut’en and the Fort St. James Primary Care Society, Northern Health will contract two additional physicians to support outreach services to surrounding First Nations communities. The physicians will start seeing patients under the new contracts on Nov. 1, 2018.

The Quesnel Urgent Primary Care Centre will soon open to provide people a new option for same-day access to urgent primary care.

It will be the first Urgent Primary Care Centre (UPCC) in the North under the government’s primary health-care strategy.

The new Quesnel Urgent Primary Care Centre was created through a partnership between the Ministry of Health, Northern Health, and the Northern Interior Division of Family Practice. An annualized budget of $1.1 million in funding has been allocated by the ministry to establish the centre.

Better care is on the way for people in Fort St. James and the surrounding region.

The Stuart Lake Hospital replacement project has received the official green light, with government approval of the concept plan.

Discussions regarding the replacement of the hospital have been ongoing since 2008. In September 2015, Northern Health submitted a concept plan to the Ministry of Health. Northern Health submitted a revised concept plan to government in summer 2018, which was approved in October 2018. The project now moves to business plan phase.

Northern Health is proud to partner with organizations across the country to celebrate and raise awareness around patient safety during the last week of October. Canadian Patient Safety Week 2018 runs from October 29 to November 2.

The University Hospital of Northern BC is currently experiencing higher-than-normal volumes of patients, and Northern Health is both working on and looking forward to measures that will reduce pressure on the UHNBC emergency department, and improve the overall flow of patients.