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The Norfolk Family Heath Team, currently located in Delhi, is making a move to downtown Simcoe.
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The move will provide a larger space for the team, a fully accessible office, and more parking to accommodate “exponential growth”, allowing the team to serve the entire Norfolk community.
“Over the last four years we have grown substantially,” said executive director and nurse Robin Mackie in a news release.
“In doing so, we have outgrown our dedicated space at the Delhi Community Health Centre.”
Mackie said the planned move was “bittersweet” since the team was fond of its Delhi locale, but the expansion will allow it to serve rural health care services to more people.
The new Simcoe location is at 185 Robinson St., right near the Norfolk General Hospital. The timeline for the move is early 2024.
Mackie said the team expects to accommodate more staff who will enhance the services provided for marginalized and vulnerable members of the county, especially those without a current doctor or access to health care services.
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The team’s top priority is offering quality health care to the most unattached patients possible.
There will be a newly dedicated space for the county’s international agricultural workers.
The executive director stressed that all currently registered patients with the health team will be able to keep their doctors and access the same health care services out of Simcoe.
Once the team moves from Delhi, there will be space available in the community health center there to offer more health care services to that community.
Mackie said that’s a “win/win” for the community.
“The new space in Simcoe will honor the Norfolk Family Health Team’s Delhi roots at the health center and recognize the outstanding generosity of the Delhi community.”
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The Delhi Community Health Center will continue to provide health care services to the community.
“The Delhi Community Health Center was built by the community, for the community, to provide access to quality health care services, and that directive has never changed. The DCHC will actively work towards filling the space that will become available in our Center with new health care service providers,” said a post on social media.
Mackie said with the health team in “growth mode”, the board will be looking for opportunities to consider satellite services that would bring “small-town quality rural health care services” to as many under-served Norfolk residents as possible.
The health team is government-funded, aims at local rural health care, and runs by a board of volunteers.
“It is rural people involved in bringing quality, sustainable rural health care to Norfolk residents,” said board chair Murray Porteous, “and we act with rural values in mind,”
Mackie said she hopes the move will attract more healthcare professionals to the county.
The building at 185 Robinson Street is also the location of some Norfolk County administration offices in the same building and also houses the provincial offenses office.
@EXPSGamble
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