Calls grow for extended urgent care hours in rapidly growing town of Cochrane

February 13, 2025 Canuck

As Cochrane’s population balloons, a recently formed health foundation and two grieving parents are pushing for extended hours at the local urgent care centre — with the goal of eventually having it open 24/7.

Roughly 30 minutes west of Calgary, the Cochrane Urgent Care Centre opens its doors at 8 a.m. and closes at 10 p.m. every day.

Retired physician Dennis Fundytus, who is now the vice-chair of the Cochrane and Area Health Foundation, said those hours should be longer as more people move to the town.

“Our population is, I’ll say, drastically increasing with the growth, and with the growth comes a need for extended services,” said Fundytus.

Cochrane’s population has almost doubled in size over the past decade alone. It’s now a community of nearly 40,000 people, and by the town’s own projections, the population could grow to 90,000 people by 2050.

Extending urgent care hours has been the priority for the organization’s founding members for years, even before it began officially operating as a health foundation in 2024. The idea was inspired by a similar move in Airdrie, where that city’s health foundation succeeded in establishing 24-hour urgent care in 2017.

A sign in a snowy field states Welcome to Cochrane. How the west is now. — Cochrane residents who need urgent health care after 10 p.m. have to travel to Calgary or Canmore. (Mario De Ciccio/CBC)

But a recent tragedy in the community has ignited the push for around-the-clock access to health care.

On Wednesday afternoon, the health foundation met with the mayor of Cochrane, as well as Neil Raralio and Emilly Velasco — residents whose four-year-old daughter Everest died in October, shortly after she fell ill with cold-like symptoms and struggled to breathe.

Raralio said they tried to get help from the local urgent care centre, but it was closed. By the time Everest arrived by ambulance at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, it was too late.

An overview of residential communities with the snow-capped Rocky Mountains in the distance. — This April 2018 view from the large hill heading down into Cochrane, Alta., shows houses and more distant apartment buildings, bare foothills and snowy Rockies in the distance. (Mario De Ciccio/CBC)

Now, months later, Raralio and Velasco are joining the foundation’s calls for extended hours to ensure all Cochrane residents who need help at night are able to get it.

“Our children and the other thousands of residents here in Cochrane — almost 40,000 people — they may potentially have an urgent circumstance like ours. These emergencies … they can happen at any time, and we need to be able to respond at any time,” said Raralio.

The couple said they want to push for change in the same way their daughter lived her life: as gently and kindly as possible.

“She just filled our life with so much fun and so much life and play,” said Velasco.

Cochrane Mayor Jeff Genung said Everest’s story underscores the importance of residents having a fully staffed, fully functional place to go in the case of an emergency.

Health care has been a major pinch point for the town as its population grows, he said, and it’s critical to get ahead of the problem — however, it’s out of the town’s jurisdiction. As town council advocates for extended hours to the province, Genung said they’re being careful about what exactly they’re asking for.

“I would hate it if [Alberta Health Services] were to come along and scratch the hours off the door and write in ’24 hours’ and not make any changes behind the scenes. And I’m not suggesting that they will do that, but that is not what we want,” said Genung.

“We want increased services and the funding that would go along with extended hours.”

AHS did not respond to CBC’s request for comment by publication time.

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