Health group will move to new building behind CIBC
Some of Niagara-on-the-Lake's doctors are getting new digs.
Next January, five NOTL doctors and the entire Niagara North Family Health Team are planning to move to The Village plaza, to a yet-to-be-constructed building behind the CIBC bank.
The facility will be called the Village Medical Centre and will be home to the practices of physicians Iram Ahmed, Tim Bastedo, Karen Berti, Samreen Malik and Pratik Kalani, as well as the members of the Niagara North Family Health Team.
The other doctors from the current facility – Dirgham Al-Jarrah, Steve Durocher, Abby Mahdy, Ronan O’Leary, Luigi Ricciardi and Francois Viviers – are expected to remain at the site behind Simpson's Pharmacy on Niagara Stone Road.
Their affiliation with the health team will continue unchanged, said Mary Keith, executive director of the health team.
All the allied health services currently available at the Niagara Medical Centre and the Old Town hospital site will also move to the new facility, Keith said. It is unclear what will happen to the labs now operating at the former hospital.
Simpson's Pharmacy will remain at its current location.
However, no moves will happen until the new facility is built, Keith added.
Efforts to find a long-term home for the medical group have been ongoing for more than seven years, since the news of the eventual closure of the NOTL hospital, she said.
The proposed Virgil Medical Centre near Crossroads Public School is no longer on the table for the health team, she added.
Lloyd Redekopp, the NOTL developer who has been planning the Virgil centre for several years, said the health team's announcement doesn't change his proposal.
The health team has formalized an agreement with John and Adam Hawley, developers of The Village, to construct a purpose-built facility directly behind the CIBC, Keith told The Lake Report.
“This single-storey building will provide ground-level access to health care in an accessible location in an established commercial destination,” Keith said in a statement.
“It will house family physicians, nurse practitioners, a diabetes support team, registered dietitians, a mental health team, chiropody/foot care, nurse educators and occupational therapy,” she said.
The building will also be the home of all of the family health team group programming as well as the administration staff.
Bastedo said though the latest concept differs from the original plan to move to Virgil, “it represents part of a new way forward for primary care in Niagara-on-the-Lake.”
“We are looking forward to being able to provide our patients centralized care in a facility designed to fit their needs and the needs of the health care team,” he said.
“Our team, our town and the practice of medicine have evolved over the last several years,” Bastedo said. “That time has provided perspective on how to best deliver quality care and we are excited about how the new facility will help us achieve that.”
John and Adam Hawley said they are “thrilled to welcome the doctors and the family health team to The Village.”