{"id":229359,"date":"2025-10-21T12:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T12:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229359\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T12:47:10","slug":"new-health-care-centre-opens-tuesday-at-former-costco-in-st-johns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229359\/","title":{"rendered":"New health-care centre opens Tuesday at former Costco in St. John\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new health-care facility in the former Costco building in St. John&#8217;s is opening this week, offering several outpatient services that were relocated from city hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been several years, but it\u2019s exciting to see that now, Tuesday, we\u2019re going to have patients walking through the door,\u201d said Kim Pike, clinical planner with Capital Planning and Engineering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a beautiful space here that patients can easily navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The two-story Unity Health Centre at 28 Stavanger Drive was open for public tours on Sunday, with dozens of people arriving for a first look. Patients will start coming on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Woman smiles for picture in health care facility waiting room\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761050830_509_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.3333333333333333\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Kim Pike has been involved in planning the new health centre from the beginning. (Laura Howells\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p>Seats fill the spacious waiting areas on both floors, with brightly coloured signage for the different clinics. The centre has free parking, large murals on the walls, and will eventually house a coffee shop and drug store.<\/p>\n<p>Pike says patients will be able to easily get around the new space, and \u201cdon&#8217;t have the maze of our large and intimidating acute care hospital.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For people accessing health care, she thinks &#8220;this is going to be a much calmer and pleasant experience.&#8221; Patients will have shorter distances to walk, she said, as well as central waiting areas and better signage.<\/p>\n<p>A number of outpatient services from the Health Sciences Centre, the Janeway and St. Clare\u2019s Hospital have moved to the new centre, with more opening later.<\/p>\n<p>Clinics opening Tuesday include the medicine and surgery specialty clinics, eye clinic, bariatric and total joint assessment, plastic surgery outpatient, endocrine, thrombosis, general medicine, cardiac diagnostics, orthopedics, audiology, and X-rays, among others.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Dozens of chairs in a row in a colorful waiting room\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761050830_668_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.3333333333333333\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>The facility offers several outpatient clinics, which were relocated from local hospitals (Laura Howells\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p>More services will open in December, including blood collection, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, ultrasound appointments, pre-admission clinic, and a pain clinic. Two MRI machines will be added to the building in January.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0An urgent care centre will also open at the site later this year.<\/p>\n<p>N.L. Health Services is leasing the space, which was a big draw to the area when it housed Costco, before it moved in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve repurposed, revitalized an area in the city that was once kind of a desert town,\u201d said Pike.<\/p>\n<p> Download our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/newsapp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/subscriptions.cbc.ca\/listmanagement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/newfoundland-labrador\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here to visit our landing page<\/a>.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new health-care facility in the former Costco building in St. John&#8217;s is opening this week, offering several&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-229359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}