Costco-turned-clinic almost ready to open in St. John’s

The trend of putting medical services in retail spaces is coming to St. John’s, N.L., with a former Costco being remade to ease congestion at nearby hospitals.

Construction crews in St. John’s, N.L., are heading into the final stretch of an ambitious renovation — turning an abandoned big box store into Newfoundland and Labrador’s newest health hub.

Officials say the ambulatory health hub and urgent care clinic coming to a former Costco warehouse is set to open Oct. 21. In a bid to ease crowding and traffic, it will bring services and patients from other hospitals into the new location.

“Things, in this facility, are where they need to be, rather than where they can be,” said Greg Browne, a manager of infrastructure at Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services.

That’s a contrast to other hospitals in the city — Browne said the second newest facility, the Health Sciences Centre, is approaching 50 years old.

“Stuff is designed, purpose built for patient care, rather than retrofitted and poked in, you know, where it can fit.”

The health board will pay around $4 million each year to lease the space, which is being constructed by a group of contractors calling themselves Newfoundland and Labrador Health Alliance.

The creation of the new clinic space was kick-started, Browne said, with the decision to rent a renovated building, rather than construct something from scratch.

“Despite the fact that renovations have been very extensive, having a structure in place already vastly sped up the project,” Browne said.

Officials say it also helped that the existing Costco layout was already open, with very little rooms or other existing infrastructure to remove or work around.

One of the biggest construction jobs on site was the creation of a second floor throughout the building — something that wasn’t there when the Costco’s last checkout line closed in 2019.

“The second floor is poured in sections, which is part of the reason that the second floor is a bit further along than the first,” said Kim Pike, a clinical planner for the provincial health board.

“The second floor was ready to start work before we could start downstairs.”

The new clinic will handle X-rays, ultrasounds, blood collection and other services where overnight hospitalization is not required. The urgent care wing will be equipped to handle non-life-threatening injuries.

The site will also add two new MRI machines to the province’s health care system.

The location is already well-known to many people in St. John’s and health officials hope that makes it easier for people to adapt to the new location for health care services when appointments get moved in October.

Analysts and real-estate industry insiders call it “medtail” — the marriage of medical services into commercial spaces like strip malls or shopping centres.

While Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services has launched an ambitious entry into the genre, Browne said it’s not the only one of its kind, and he’s confident it won’t be the last.

“I was at a clinic in Halifax that is being constructed in a former car dealership,” he said. “This is a model that is being rolled out in other areas of the country as well.”