Upgrades planned for the emergency department at Petrolia’s hospital, pending provincial Health Ministry approval since 2019, recently moved a little closer to getting underway.
Upgrades planned for the emergency department at Petrolia’s hospital, pending provincial Health Ministry approval since 2019recently moved a little closer to getting underway.
Advertisement 2
Article content
Bluewater Health, the corporation that operates Sarnia’s hospital and Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia, is working out technical issues, mostly around scope and code, of the renovation plan with the provincial health capital investment branch, said the corporation’s clinical services vice-president Bob DeRaad.
Article content
It’s a short list of questions in response to submissions Bluewater Health made in September, said president and chief executive Paula Reaume-Zimmer, in a recent report.
“They’re just wanting to ensure the work that we’re doing, that it’s going to be up to ministry standards,” DeRaad said, adding the process to get to this point has taken about as long as expected.
Architect and engineering firm Dialog, contracted by Bluewater Health for $300,000 to $400,000 to help with submissions in what’s known as stages 2.1 and 2.2 of the capital planning process, is helping answer those questions, DeRaad said.
Advertisement 3
Article content
And, if Bluewater Health gets the go-ahead from the ministry after it responds, the next step is hiring a contractor to do the actual renovations, expected to happen in phases and take 18 to 24 months, he said.
When that ministry approval to tender the project may come is “out of my hands,” DeRaad said, adding hopes are it happens sometime this year.
Emergency room and diagnostic imaging renovations are phase one of the five-phase projectestimated in 2017 at $30 million over 25 or more years.
The first-phase cost was then estimated at $8.8 million, 90 per cent covered by provincial grant money, DeRaad said.
After global inflation spurred by a pandemic and the better part of a decade, in which the ministry approval process has also changed — “it is simplified in my opinion,” DeRaad said — both the cost of the project and the amount of funding Bluewater Health receives “has to” increase, he said.
Advertisement 4
Article content
“We are still in the envelope of what we call a small capital project” and details, pending discussions with the ministry, will depend on what comes out of the tendering process, he said.
The remaining 10 per cent would still be raised in the community via the Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital Foundation, he said.
DeRaad said he couldn’t answer how much has been raised for the project so far. The provincial grant was also announced in 2017.
“But I know that our foundation is very confident that they will be able to cover the local share of the capital project,” he said.
Subsequent phases of the hospital upgrade project — after emergency room renovations, there’s building a new emergency room, converting the old one to ambulatory care, building a new addition to expand diagnostic imaging and laboratory space, before building a new acute inpatient unit, and finally ensuring all services and departments are up and running, a 2017 project master plan says — will also require ministry approval, DeRaad said.
Advertisement 5
Article content
Local planning for the project has been in the works at least since 2013, in part spurred by increased volume at the Petrolia hospital emergency room — originally designed for around 7,000 patients per year and that’s still seeing around 22,000 per year, DeRaad said.
A series of five expansions over about 70 years at the hospital, originally built in 1911, also left it functional but not cohesive and with a lot of wasted space, hospital officials have said.
The Town of Petrolia has long-term plans to build a health care village around the upgraded hospital, with affordable housing, assisted living, education and research facilities, long-term and palliative care, among other amenities.
Bluewater Health in 2018 received millions of dollars in provincial “exceptional circumstances” funding to purchase a new boiler plant and complete various repairs at the Petrolia site.
Bluewater Health has also invested about $4.3 million of its own capital budget into Petrolia hospital infrastructure upgrades, including the boiler plant, updating plumbing and electrical, replacing a cooling tower, and renovating various rooms, DeRaad said.
“We’re excited for the future of Petrolia,” he said.
Article content