New urgent primary care clinic opens in Qualicum Beach

Published 5:35 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026

A new urgent primary care clinic is open in Qualicum Beach two days a week, with medical care costs covered by MSP.

The founder and CEO of TrueWave Integrative Health Clinic said the clinic will be open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for now, but the hope is to expand to five days a week at some point.

“The goal is to try to offload some of the pressure from the urgent care centre, that people don’t have to go in there and sit for six hours or eight hours for something that could be dealt with at a clinic setting,” said Murray Coughtrey.

The clinic is located at Coughtrey’s existing practice, which offers services including non-invasive shockwave therapy treatments.

The urgent primary care clinic is staffed by a doctor, who was seeing upwards of 47 patients a day, but Coughtrey said they will scale back the number of patients a day to approximately 38 or 40, to avoid burnout.

“It’s been difficult setting this up. It’s me doing it on my own. The health authority and others haven’t been involved, so it’s quite a difficult, costly expense to get things up and running,” Coughtrey added. “It’s very difficult to recruit GPs. The avenue for it has been typically through the Division of Family Practice and they haven’t been able to give me any help.”

Services and treatment include: prescription refills; minor injuries (sprains, cuts, minor burns); urinary tract infections; women’s health concerns; men’s health concerns; pediatric care; assessment and treatment of minor illnesses (such as infections, flu, rashes); and assessment and management of non-emergent medical issues.

There are fees for ICBC driver’s medical examinations and third party form completion, the same as any other GP, Coughtrey said.

Word got out quickly after the clinic opened earlier in February and although it’s been a bit of “a zoo” to start, Coughtrey said the people coming in are being understanding and appreciative.

“They’re elated that there’s somewhere that they can go that you don’t have to actually pay to access.”

There has been some confusion on social media, Coughtrey said, despite the clinic’s ads explicitly saying medical care is MSP-covered.

Adding the services of a nurse practitioner would be a challenge, since they don’t bill for their time like a GP, Coughtrey said, and are funded by the Ministry of Health. He plans to contact the ministry’s rep for the primary care network on the Island to see if the ministry can help the clinic with a nurse practitioner.

The expenses involved in running the clinic are “huge”, Coughtrey said.

“I’m doing this more for a public service than anything else, because I am not making money at it. It’s actually costing me money.”

He is working on bringing in more doctors and said there are retired GPs open to working a few days a week in a walk-in clinic setting.

“We’re going to try to expand it. It may take a while and during the initial phase, in the next month or two, there’s gonna be little tweaks that we’re gonna have to make it more efficient and better servicing the public,” he added. “Bear with us. We’ll do what we can to help people that don’t have physicians or do have physicians and can’t get in to see them.”

People can can book a appointment or walk in during clinic hours.

TrueWave Integrative Health Clinic is located at 219 – 1B Fern Rd. W in Qualicum Beach.

For more information or to book an appointment call 778-909-1151.

New urgent primary care clinic opens in Qualicum Beach

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