The Niverville Heritage Centre is opening up a new 5,000 square foot medical clinic as part of their life lease building expansion.

Steve Neufeld is the CEO of the Niverville Hertiage Centre. He says the new facility is a partnership between the Niverville Heritage Centre, Southern Health, and the Niverville Medical Clinic. He says the plan is for the new clinic to provide additional services to what you would typically see in a primary healthcare centre or doctors office.

“Some of those additional services might be day surgeries, so lumps bumps and stitches. If you have a child that is playing hockey and lets say the get cut with a stick or a skate, rather then going to an ER where we know the wait times are anywhere between six and ten hours you'd be able to come to a clinic here and actually be able to get the sutures done by a doctor.”

Neufeld says though it may take some time the plan is to eventually have the clinic open seven days a week for 18 hour days. He notes another additional service that they plan to have is meetings with specialists.

“There is also going to be rooms set up in there for itinerant specialists to come around. Rather then going to Winnipeg for a specialist, Maybe there is going to be a specialist here that comes quarterly throughout the year and you can make appointments to see them here in Niverville.”

Neufeld says all communities is Southeast Manbitoba will benefit from this clinic because it will relieve pressure on the emergency rooms in the area. He notes every year Niverville hosts a rural doctors meeting to encourage students who are about to graduate to come to Niverville.

“While rural doctoring and general practitioning is something that they desire to do, they don't want to loose the skills that they have learned in other areas like minor surgeries. So if we can create a facility that is attractive to work in and it allows the doctors to do the more urgent stuff, it taps into their skill set that they have learned that they may want to keep fresh at all times.”

Neufeld says Niverville's close proximity to Winnipeg and Steinbach makes it well positioned to maximize what this new clinic can do to attract doctors to Niverville.