Primary Care

Primary care includes all the services provided to meet your everyday health needs (“whole person care”). This might be a checkup with your family physician or nurse practitioner, a visit to a physiotherapist, or a trip to the pharmacist or public health nurse.

Primary care is based on a long-term relationship between you and your primary care provider (your physician or nurse practitioner and their team) who is your main point of contact for health services. 

We’re committed to supporting you with your primary care needs and help you live a healthier life.

Find a Primary Care Clinic near you

A Patient Medical Home is the family practice or primary care clinic where you receive primary care from your physician or nurse practitioner. It is often your main point of contact when you need care, with the central goal of providing patient-centred, whole-person care.
Patient Medical Homes can be operated by different organizations including private physicians, First Nations, community organizations or Interior Health. Interior Health owns and operates approximately 30 Patient Medical Homes, often in rural and remote communities or focused on under-served populations such as individuals with mental health and/or substance use needs.

A Primary Care Network is a group of primary care services working together to provide all the primary care needs for you and your community. It is built on a foundation of patient medical homes linked together and working with other providers including Interior Health nursing and allied staff and community organizations to ensure you and others in your community have improved access to comprehensive, coordinated primary care. Together, providers working as a team ensure patients can access care beyond what a single patient medical home can deliver (e.g. on evenings and weekends).

We have implemented primary care networks in the following areas of Interior Health. We are also in the process of adding future networks in other areas of the region.

• East Kootenay: Sparwood, Golden, Creston, Cranbrook, Invermere, Fernie, Kimberley, Elk Valley, Tobacco Plains, Canal Flats, Radium Hot Springs
• Kootenay Boundary: Crawford Bay, Kaslo, Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Nakusp, Salmo, Rock Creek, Greenwood
• South Okanagan Similkameen: Summerland, Penticton, Princeton, Keremeos, Oliver, Osoyoos
• Central Okanagan-North: Rutland, Lake Country
• Central Okanagan: Kelowna
• Central Okanagan-South: West Kelowna, Peachland
• Central Interior Rural: Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, Tatla Lake

An Urgent and Primary Care Centre is available when you have a non-life threatening condition and need to see a health-care provider within 12 to 24 hours, but do not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, can not access a walk-in clinic, or are unable to get an appointment with your regular primary care provider that day.

Visit our Urgent and Primary Care Centres page to learn more
 

Divisions of Family Practice are community-based groups of family doctors and nurse practitioners working together to achieve common health care goals. Through Collaborative Service Committee tables, Division representatives come together with Doctors of BC, Ministry of Health, and Health Authority representatives to further collaborate and discuss ways of working more effectively together to improve the health of populations and services in their communities.

Divisions are incorporated as non-profit societies to give them the legal status necessary to sign contracts and/or hold funds to carry out programs in their communities. They do not duplicate roles and responsibilities of a health authority.

Learn more about Divisions of Family Practice in BC