By Cheryl Jahn

Primary Care Report released

Aug 13, 2025 | 4:00 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The provincial government has sent out a glowing report of how well Urgent and Primary Care Centres are doing to address the number of British Columbians who are without a regular physician.

Vancouver Island has 11 UPCCs and saw nearly 205,878, 107,136 of whom did not have a family physician. Fraser Health has 10 UPCC clinics, which saw 259,994 patients, 106,899 of whom had no family doctor. Northern Health, though, has two UPCCs that saw 32,904 patients; 28,08 did not have a family doctor.

“We’re not seeing results in how we’re going to tackle getting people attached to a family doctor here in Prince George,” says Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Kiel Giddens, who has championed the UPCC in Prince George from the beginning.

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What makes the numbers more startling is that for all the other health authorities, the data was drawn from April 1st of last year to the end of March this year. This UPCC only opened its doors in December.

“This Urgent Primary Care Centre is meant to keep people out of the emergency room,” says Giddens. “And for those who really don’t have a family doctor, we need to get people attached to family physicians. But we need an option for people. And that’s what this centre is supposed to be doing.”

We caught up with a patient at the clinic.

“This morning I came in around 9:00. They saw me pretty early, after like half an hour. And then they asked me to come back at about 11:30. So it was maybe like a couple of hours to be seen by a doctor.”

He told us he came to the clinic despite having a family doctor.

“I came here just because it was a very short-notice thing, and it was fairly minor. I kind of expected there would be a wait time like that. But I had the time today, so I figured I would come to the clinic.”

Giddens says understaffing means the Urgent and Primary Care Centre isn’t always open when it should be.

“We have rural ER closures all over the place, and yet these Urgent and Primary Care Centres, we have one in Prince George, one in Quesnel, and that’s it for the entire region. People need access to the system. When an emergency room is not open, when they can’t get into an Urgent and Primary Care Centre, where are they supposed to go?”

He suggests the Province needs to pay special attention to how physicians are paid for their work in the Northern Health region.