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Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services (NLHS) has spent at least $1 million leasing space for a new urgent care clinic in Mount Pearl that’s been unable to open due to staffing issues.
Construction on the 12,398-square-foot facility at 850 Topsail Rd., which is leased to the health authority by the Morgan Group of Companies, finished in late 2025. Urgent Care Centre West was supposed to open by the end of that year, but has since been repeatedly postponed.
Parts of the building are being used. The top floor is occupied by a new family care team, as intended. Since last week, X-ray services have been offered on the facility’s main floor, which is also temporarily housing newcomers and walk-in clinics during renovations at 50 Mundy Pond Rd. in St. John’s.
Neither NLHS nor the provincial health department are providing a timeline for when the building will be used for its primary purpose: becoming the metro area’s second urgent care centre.
For now, the word “urgent” is covered up with duct tape on the main sign near the entrance to the centre’s parking lot.
The word ‘urgent’ has been covered over with tape on the main sign in front of 850 Topsail Rd. in Mount Pearl, the new building that Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services hopes will soon house a new urgent care centre. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)
Urgent care centres provide same-day access to physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals to treat non-life-threatening conditions such as sprains or infections.
A key plank of the Health Accord NL — a 10-year health-care modernization plan created under the former Liberal government — the centres were promised to free up emergency room space. That promise hasn’t been fulfilled, with emergency room physicians saying the real problem is the lack of beds in long-term care facilities to move people out of ERs.
According to a briefing note from February labelled “Empty Buildings,” NLHS is paying about $98,000 per month to lease the portion of 850 Topsail Rd. intended for urgent care.
Staffing problems at Stavanger Drive centre, too
The same briefing note obtained through access to information legislation also points to problems staffing Urgent Care Centre East, the St. John’s metro region’s first urgent care centre, which opened last January in the former Costco building on Stavanger Drive.
Inadequate staffing levels at that facility have repeatedly led to shutdowns or service reductions, according to multiple briefings prepared for former health minister Lela Evans.
“NL Health Services is taking proactive steps to stabilize staffing and accelerate opening of sites, including active recruitment, reviewing compensation models, stabilizing Urgent Care Centre East and escalating approvals needed for renovations and staffing,” reads the February briefing note.
Evans, while health minister, repeatedly said her department and NLHS were working to address ongoing staffing issues at the facility, which operates 7 days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“I’m very committed to making sure we keep the hours from eight to eight, but in actual fact, we need to be able to expand the resources,” Evans said last July, about a month before Joedy Wall replaced her as health minister.
Neither Wall nor NLHS granted Radio-Canada an interview.
PCs promise 3rd urgent care centre in C.B.S.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Conservative government is standing by its election promise of building another urgent care centre in Conception Bay South.
No timeline has been made public for opening that centre, although $1.9 million was allocated for the facility in this year’s budget.
“The urgent care centre in Conception Bay South remains in the planning phase, with construction anticipated to begin in 2027,” wrote health and community services spokesperson Jennifer Konieczny in a statement on Wednesday morning, after Radio-Canada first published its story.
“Human resource planning has commenced for the recruitment of health care professionals to appropriately service the urgent care centre in Conception Bay South.”
A briefing note prepared for Evans on Jan. 8 states that both the Stavanger Drive and Topsail Road urgent care centres were slated to open in “late 2025” but “recruitment challenges” led to delays.
The Stavanger Drive centre opened four days later, on Jan. 12, and according to the same briefing note, the Topsail Road facility was expected at that time “to open later in the spring, pending recruitment of [health care] providers.”
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