Private Fredericton clinic is the company's sixth in Canada, third in Atlantic provinces
Retired captain Dennis LeBlanc had the idea for Echelon Wellness, said CEO Igor Gimelshtein. Photo by SEAN CUNNINGHAM BRUNSWICK NEWS
With the opening of a sixth clinic in Fredericton, retired captain Dennis LeBlanc won’t have to drive four hours to Bedford, just outside Halifax, to receive medical care.
Echelon Wellness, a private company that helps to bridge the gap between veterans and RCMP and Veterans Affairs Canada, which ensures them medical care related to their service, held the grand opening of their new King Street location Thursday morning.
Echelon already has locations in Edmonton, Kingston, Ottawa and St. John’s.
“We are (a) for-profit company, but we have a north star. The north star is helping veterans live healthier lives, and we will leave no stone unturned to get there,” said chief executive officer Igor Gimelshtein.
Gimelshtein says veterans don’t ever have to pay or even talk about money at Echelon.
“What we do is we navigate within the confines of what they actually have coverage for to design a plan that’s customized for them,” he said, meaning dealing with complicated health-care system that’s just as, if not more, confusing for veterans as it is for civilians.
Echelon Wellness CEO Igor Gimelshtein. Photo by SEAN CUNNINGHAM BRUNSWICK NEWS
“Seventy per cent of our patients have mental health issues, 70 per cent have physical health issues, some of them overlap,” he said.
“We want to treat you holistically so that you can spend more time with your family.”
The company aims to offer veterans all the medical services they need – save for what would typically be covered by a family doctor or in the emergency room.
“Veterans Affairs Canada has a huge number of different coverage options for veterans,” he said. “Theoretically, they’re eligible for many, many things, but veterans don’t have access to them where they actually live.”
Gimelshtein said Echelon was actually LeBlanc’s idea.
“I was kind of bouncing around from clinic to clinic trying to get all my treatments (and thought), ‘why isn’t there just one treatment centre?'” said the former infantryman.
“I knew Igor (Gimelshtein) through various other groups and pitched him the idea, and that’s kind of how we came up with Echelon Wellness.”
Since the Echelon clinic opened in Bedford, LeBlanc, who is the company’s director in eastern Canada, says he’s been able to hammer out all of his appointments in one place in a single morning when visiting his son in Halifax.
Although he says he’s “pretty excited” about the new Fredericton clinic that Gimelshtein says is meant to serve those in the area.
“This is where I live, so now I don’t have to travel,” said LeBlanc.
