Bonnyville's hospital was well designed for the area and patient volume it served in the 1980s when it opened, but it's showing its age and its limitations, and needs improvements to better serve a growing area population. That was the key message local officials and Covenant Health staff took to Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky when he toured through the building Friday.
The tour provided an excellent opportunity for the minister to see how crowded certain parts of the building can be, and helped make the case for a proposed expansion and renovation project that was submitted to the province last spring. Alberta Health Services has yet to commit capital funding to the proposal, which has a ballpark price tag in the vicinity of $50 million.
The Bonnyville Healthcare Centre Functional Program, as the plan is known, details how renovating and expanding the hospital would improve service delivery now and into the future as the oilsands industry grows in the area.
The document contemplates almost 88,000 square feet of new construction to the north end of the hospital, and renovating an additional 34,400 square feet.
The new and renovated space would then accommodate almost 12,000 square feet for the now-crowded emergency department, 20,600 square feet for ambulatory care, 7,500 square feet for operating rooms (two new operating rooms would be added specifically for orthopedic surgeries), 12,300 square feet for clinical lab and diagnostic imaging functions, 13,600 square feet for the medical inpatient unit, and 17,300 square feet for community health services now spread out between Bonnyville's Provincial Building and the office complex on Highway 28 across from the Centennial Centre.
That would make the hospital an effective “one-stop shop” and improve efficiencies, according to the plan's summary.
“The nice thing about this particular project is it wouldn't affect day-to-day activities while the project is going on because the majority of it is added on to the outside of the building,” said Alex Smyl, executive director for the BHC.
The proposed expansion would greatly hike the space for the emergency and ambulatory care areas in a hospital where crowding occurs partly because many patients, especially temporary residents, use the hospital because of lack of clinic access to a family doctor.
New operating rooms in the proposal would be built for the increasingly busy orthopedic surgery program. Orthopedic surgery is done in the hospital's existing operating rooms, but they weren't designed for larger equipment in use today. Zwozdesky got a first hand look at how tight the rooms can be even without a patient in them when he toured the hospital Friday afternoon.
Bonnyville's hospital accommodates a wide variety of medical procedures, and has resident or visiting specialists in orthopedics, obstetrics/gynecology, internal medicine, urology, surgery, anesthesiology, pathology, cardiology, radiology, endoscopy, pediatrics and chiropractics.
The number of ambulatory patient visits to the hospital has increased from around 6,000 in 2006-07 to over 10,000 for the past three years.
Inpatient days increased from less than 7,000 in 2006-07 to over 9,000 for 2009-2010.
Emergency visits are also up in the past three years, though only by about 10 per cent.
Lab stats have climbed significantly with the move of the regional lab to the facility, with roughly 50,000 pieces of lab work flowing through the Bonnyville lab last year, up from less than 18,000 only 13 years ago. The hospital employs two pathologists as well as several lab staff and is a designated Level 5 lab.
The proposed hospital expansion would stay within the confines of the hospital's current property. The building would expand to the north into the existing parking lot after parking lots were added to the south of the existing building on green spaces along the north side of Lakeshore Drive.
Covenant Health is looking at adding a 100-unit designated assisted living development in Bonnyville, but not on the current hospital site.
That would help reduce waiting lists for the local seniors lodge, seniors manors and the long-term care wing of the hospital.
It would also help free up space in acute care beds in the hospital that are occupied by long-term care residents.
