Royal Ottawa opens first-of-its-kind mental health urgent care clinic on Carling Avenue
Adults experiencing psychiatric crisis can now walk in without appointment or referral to the new Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic, which opens Sept. 21 to ease city emergency department strain.
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Adults in Ottawa experiencing urgent mental health symptoms now have somewhere to go besides the emergency department. The Royal Ottawa's Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic opened Sept. 21 on the Carling Avenue campus, offering walk-in psychiatric care without appointment or referral — the first service of its kind in eastern Ontario.
Cara Vaccarino, who arrived as president and CEO of The Royal in early 2024, found the hospital cut off from the wider health system when she started. "I was very, very surprised that there was no direct access to The Royal's mostly inpatient services, which is a flow-through to outpatient care as well," she told Kitchissippi Times. The Royal's psychiatric emergency department had closed in 2000 after Ontario restructured hospital care across the province, isolating the facility for over two decades. Vaccarino and her team spent more than two years rebuilding that access.
The clinic fills a specific gap: for people whose psychiatric symptoms are too serious to wait for their next appointment but not severe enough to warrant a traditional emergency room. "We're looking at — relative to other jurisdictions — very high emergency department wait times across the city of Ottawa, and the urgent care clinic at The Royal will be a really excellent way to help people divert from going to the emergency departments, which are really overburdened with unprecedented demand," Vaccarino said.
The clinic also serves family doctors managing complex patients. "When they need help with really complex, acute or confusing patients, they need access to specialized mental health assessment and treatment," Vaccarino said.
A study by researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and University of Ottawa examining over 170,000 emergency department visits between May 2022 and April 2024 found about nine per cent of those visits ended with patients leaving before being seen — a sign of the strain the urgent care model aims to ease.
How many patients is the clinic projected to serve per month?
What are the clinic's hours of operation?
Does the clinic accept patients without OHIP coverage or with coverage from outside Ontario?
We'll update this story as answers emerge.
The facts
When did the Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic open?
The clinic opened on Monday, September 21, 2026, at The Royal Ottawa's Carling Avenue campus.
What type of patients can use the clinic without an appointment?
Adults experiencing urgent psychiatric symptoms can walk in without an appointment or referral to the Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic.
Why did The Royal Ottawa close its psychiatric emergency department?
The Royal Ottawa's psychiatric emergency department closed in 2000 after Ontario restructured hospital care across the province.
What did the Ottawa Hospital and University of Ottawa study find about emergency department visits?
A study examining over 170,000 emergency department visits between May 2022 and April 2024 found that about nine per cent of those visits ended with patients leaving before being seen.
