Two Urgent and Primary Care Centres in the Lower Mainland will no longer be operated by a private company, which is now in receivership as it faces a self-described “financial crisis.”
On June 26, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick approved Vancouver Coastal Health’s application to put Seymour Health Centre Inc. and its three medical clinics in receivership to protect the nearly $7 million in loans the health authority is owed.
Seymour Health will hand over the two Urgent and Primary Care Centres (UPCC) it operates in Downtown Vancouver and North Vancouver, to the health authority, next month, according to the court decision. The health authority will also take over the North Vancouver medical clinic that operates at the side of the UPCC, which provides non-emergency but urgent care to people with the goal of alleviating demand on hospitals.
According to the decision, Seymour Health is undergoing operational changes, including staff layoffs. And while it is recruiting new physicians, its chief medical officer Dr. Eric Cadesky stated to the court that he expects “significant physician attrition will occur” if a receiver takes over the clinics.
Fitzpatrick noted that in 2022, there were about 265,000 “patient interactions” at the three clinics (at Hornby Street and at West 7th Avenue in Vancouver as well as Esplanade West in North Vancouver). As of last April, some 166 medical professionals worked at the clinics.
Seymour Health does not deny it owes the health authority money for operating loans and unpaid rent at the Hornby clinic and UPCC. But it has claimed the Ministry of Health, by way of the Medical Services Commission, has failed to license its ancillary services, which are now closed. As a result, the company paid out of pocket to keep diagnostics running for many years.
Seymour Health bills itself as the largest medical clinic provider in B.C., but is at least second in size to Well Health, which told BIV it operates around 30 medical clinics in the province, and approximately 135 medical clinics across the country. Seymour Health opened its downtown UPCC in November 2018, followed by the North Vancouver UPCC a year later.
As a result of not being able to charge the Medical Services Plan (MSP) for those ancillary services, which were supposed to keep the clinic profitable, the company has launched a separate lawsuit against the provincial government.
Fitzpatrick stated it was her understanding both sides were committed to maintaining care for patients, despite the “financial crisis” clinic owners Gursahib Bining and his spouse, Sandeep Kaur Parmar, described to the court.
In putting the clinic under receivership by Ernst and Young, Fitzpatrick noted Seymour Health provided limited information about its financial crisis.
“There is no evidence as to what vendor amounts are currently outstanding. There is no information as to whether Seymour Health is up to date in respect of its employee remittances to Canada Revenue Agency. There is no information as to whether GST remittances are up to date.
“All of this is to say that, from the limited financial information before me, it appears that Seymour Health’s ‘financial crisis’ in mid‑2022 has continued and is very much an accurate description of its current state,” stated Fitzpatrick.
Editor's note: This article was updated to add contextual information regarding the size of Seymour Health's medical business.
