A new option is now available for people who need heath care in the region. The Sunrise Health and Wellness Centre takes a different approach to healthcare, working on a collaborative model which brings together people with different specialties to help work with a patient under one roof. The center will focus on patients with chronic conditions, women's wellness services and general health needs.
The clinic is built on a collaborative model, with physician and nurse practitioner services, diabetes education, exercise therapy, pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation and a range of women's wellness services offered. Instead of having dedicated offices for care providers, they move to different rooms as needed, and patients are able to handle their different medical needs in one location, with one appointment, with all of their care providers collaborating.
Dr. Phillip Fourie has been working on the concept of the clinic for several years, getting multiple providers under one roof to improve patient care. The opening of the clinic is not the goal, he says, but a major milestone in improving the care delivery in the health region.
“We can't end here just with this innovation site, what we have is an opportunity for now is to use what we learn from this facility and use it in other facilities in this region.”
The project was built on a collaborative model, bringing together care providers and patient representatives through the design process to put the clinic together.
“This project absolutely demonstrated that you can't do anything on your own. With a team effort you
get such a better product, the same thing goes for health care delivery. When you have team delivered care, you have a much better product than what you can get on your own,” Fourie says.
The collaborative process extends to another project Fourie demonstrated at the grand opening, that being a move to a one patient, one record system for health charts. Fourie says that Sunrise has an opportunity to lead the charge in the province's plan to have patient records shared between different health services throughout Saskatchewan, and they are currently working to connect the different health care facilities within the region to make the records universal throughout.
Health Minister Dustan Duncan likes what he sees at the new facility, from the design of the building to the concepts behind the care. He says it's clear patients were the priority of the building, from the design of the physical structure to the model of care being developed. He says he can see other communities learning from Yorkton.
“I think in terms of the model of care here, it is certainly one that could be replicated in other locations across this province.”
