The expansion and modernization of the emergency department of St. Boniface Hospital is officially underway, the province said.
Prime Minister Heather Stephenson and Health Secretary Audrey Gordon made the announcement Tuesday morning in the mezzanine of the Asper Center at Winnipeg Hospital.
The $ 141 million plant will renovate 18,600 square meters of existing space and add 86,200 square meters of new construction, tripling the size of the current emergency department.
“The current emergency service is built to meet the needs of past generations. The new one [emergency department] will meet the future needs of future generations, “said Mike Nader, chief executive of the Winnipeg Regional Health Service.
The new emergency department for St. Boniface Hospital is planned for the first time since final report for 2017 from the provincial task force during the waiting period found that the existing emergency care did not have the capacity to adequately deal with the volume of patients at that time.
The report estimates that the hospital will see a 55% increase in the number of emergency patients due to the closure of emergency departments at Seven Oaks, Concordia and Victoria hospitals.
Construction of a new emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital has begun.
The province has revealed details of the new emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital. Prime Minister Heather Stephenson says the new emergency aid will be three times larger than the existing one. 1:51
“The physical space in the existing [emergency department] is old and inadequate even for the current volume of patients, “said the authors of the 2017 report.
A new emergency department for St. Boniface Hospital was highlighted in the report as an urgent priority and it is recommended that this be done before each closure.
Prime Minister Stephenson was asked on Tuesday why it had taken so long to launch the project.
“The important thing is to move forward,” she said.
Election promise in 2019
Former Prime Minister Brian Palister made the project a pre-election promise for the Progressive Conservatives in 2019 and initially estimated it would cost $ 90 million.
The renovation, which is now underway, will include an extended waiting room and triage area, an extended resuscitation area and a special diagnostic imaging kit with a new CT scanner and X-ray machine.
NDP leader Wab Kinew called Stephanson’s news briefing a “rollover” and accused the PC government of reducing hospital capacity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We saw this with the third wave, when we had to take patients to the intensive care unit. “Now we see him again with these huge waits in the emergency rooms,” he said.
The emergency room waiting in Winnipeg is until nine o’clock. The expansion of the St. Boniface Emergency Department will not be completed until 2025.
In 2019, the department received 48,000 visits, according to the province. The expanded facility is expected to hold 55,000 visits a year.
Based on population growth and an aging population, annual visits are expected to rise to approximately 70,000 to 75,000 by 2039, the province said.
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The new emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital will be three times larger than the current facility, the province said. (Travis Holby / CBC)
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