Trail health centre looks to next chapter after year of rapid growth
Published 5:30 am Thursday, September 24, 2026
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The Lower Columbia Community Health Centre is looking to its next chapter after a first year that saw its patient roster grow by more than 2,300 people and its team provide approximately 26,000 patient visits.
As the Trail health centre prepares to mark its one-year anniversary with a community celebration Friday, Sept. 25, executive director Rita MacLeod of the centre’s network society says its second year will bring a new set of priorities.
“Our first year was about building the foundation,” MacLeod told the Trail Times. “The second year is about putting that foundation to work.”
For the coming year, MacLeod says the society will focus on strengthening leadership and governance, refining the model of care, continuing recruitment, improving the patient and staff experience, growing community partnerships and building long-term financial stability.
The society also plans to better understand the needs of its patient population through a SPARK survey, a tool used to gather information about patients’ demographics and social needs, while continuing to improve clinical and administrative workflows.
Speaking about the Lower Columbia Community Health Centre’s future, MacLeod said, “By this time next year, we would like to see [the health centre] move confidently from startup into its next phase—a strong, stable organization with a well-established team-based care model, deeper community partnerships and a clearer understanding of how we can respond to the needs of Lower Columbia residents.”
The first year has been about building something new, she said.
“We are proud of what has been accomplished, and we are looking forward to continuing to build it together with our team, patients, board, and community partners.”
The anniversary celebration comes just over a year after the centre began seeing patients in July 2025 and a year after its official opening on Sept. 20.
The centre began operations with approximately 3,200 patients.
Today, more than 5,550 patients are attached to the clinic, including more than 725 people who previously did not have a family doctor or regular primary-care provider.
MacLeod said the growth over the first year has been significant, with the organization simultaneously delivering care, attaching new patients, recruiting staff and developing the systems and workflows needed for a community-governed, team-based model of primary care.
Approximately 26,000 patient visits have been provided since the centre opened.
About 75 per cent of those visits have been with a patient’s family physician or nurse practitioner, reflecting the central role those providers continue to play in primary care.
At the same time, patients are increasingly receiving care from the broader team, including nursing, social work, community health workers and physiotherapy.
That shift is particularly evident when the centre compares its service data from late 2025 with this year.
Family physicians and nurse practitioners accounted for 87 per cent of all patient encounters in December 2025.
By June 2026, that had fallen to 73 per cent as patients increasingly accessed other members of the health-care team.
MacLeod said the numbers demonstrate the centre’s progression from a provider-centred approach toward the team-based, patient-centred model envisioned for the health centre.
Community health workers are one example of how that model operates.
Working both in the clinic and in the community, they help patients set small, achievable goals involving exercise, diet and social connection while also helping address basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter.
Those social determinants can have a significant effect on a person’s overall health but can be difficult to address during a traditional medical appointment.
The centre has also been working with community organizations and other parts of the health-care system.
MacLeod pointed to one case in which the health centre worked alongside Interior Health’s Mental Health and Substance Use services to quickly assist a patient experiencing significant distress related to housing instability.
The collaboration allowed the team to address the immediate crisis and divert the patient from the emergency department.
Building the multidisciplinary team required to deliver that model has been an ongoing process.
The health centre currently has 3.6 family physicians, with additional providers expected to begin this fall and winter.
Those additions are expected to bring the centre to its planned complement of five family physicians.
It also has two nurse practitioners, with a 0.75 nurse practitioner expected to return from leave in the spring.
The nursing team currently consists of 2.5 nurses, with another full-time registered nurse joining the team in October.
The centre’s social work and community health worker positions are fully recruited, with five full-time staff.
Physiotherapy is currently offered one day a week.
A new part-time physiotherapist starting this month will allow the centre to increase that to three days a week.
MacLeod said staffing is close to the centre’s planned level, although recruitment remains underway.
Building the team, however, is only one of the challenges the centre has encountered.
Construction and infrastructure have also presented hurdles, along with the larger task of establishing a new model of care within the newly created non-profit Lower Columbia Community Health Centre Network Society.
MacLeod said one of the lessons of the first year was that the new model of care required more than simply adapting the way a traditional medical clinic operates.
It meant developing new structures, workflows, leadership approaches and ways of working while continuing to care for a rapidly growing and increasingly complex patient population.
That work is continuing as the centre looks more closely at the social determinants affecting the health of people in the region and considers programs that can respond to those needs.
Some of that programming has already begun.
The centre has started piloting services such as a walking group and is using both patient needs and the strengths of its staff to guide professional development in areas including advanced therapeutic models, chronic disease management and foot care.
For MacLeod, the next year will be about moving beyond the work of establishing the organization and further developing the model it was created to provide, with a stronger team, deeper community partnerships and a better understanding of resident needs in the Lower Columbia.