New walk-in clinic in Ottawa's south end charging membership fee

The South Keys Health Centre, located at Bank Street and Hunt Club Road, is set to open next week and clinic officials say thousands of potential members are already on the waiting list, ready to pay $400 per person a year for access.

It is something that thousands of people in the city of Ottawa need but don’t have, access to regular medical care. While a new clinic in the south end is offering just that, along with fast service and no wait times, it comes with a yearly membership fee.

The South Keys Health Centre, located at Bank Street and Hunt Club Road, is set to open next week and clinic officials say thousands of potential members are already on the waiting list, ready to pay $400 per person a year for access.

"It's called rapid access and it's perfectly legal," clinical director Osman Nur says. "Nurse practitioners are the ones seeing you. They can do prescriptions, they can do a lot of health information, they can send you to a specialist."

While there will be doctors at the clinic practising family medicine, those who pay the membership fee will not have access to their services. 

Under provincial health laws, it is illegal for doctors to charge a fee for services that are covered by OHIP, but nurse practitioners do not fall under this purview. Nur says with the clinic about to open, their clinic is filling a gap in the medical system due to a lack of family doctors.

"We have about 10,000 people on the wait list," Nur says. "This is nurse-led, not medical doctors. You call us and you see us right away."

The clinic also offers other services such as a pharmacy, chiropractic, physio and massage therapies, which are not always covered by OHIP.