Lack of pharmacy at the Glen site frustrates patients
MUHC superhospital has paid $1 million in rent for empty space
More than three years after it opened, the superhospital of the McGill University Health Centre still does not have a pharmacy on site for patients and parents — a source of frustration for those who need to have prescriptions filled immediately after medical appointments.
Although the MUHC reserved a space in the basement of the Glen site to sub-lease to a commercial pharmacy, the hospital network decided to postpone the plan because the space is located close to a pedestrian tunnel under construction linking the superhospital to the Vendôme métro station. Adding to the MUHC’s predicament, the hospital network has been paying rent to a private consortium for the empty space.
In fact, the MUHC has so far paid nearly $1 million in rent for two mostly empty spaces to the McGill Infrastructure Health Group, the consortium led by engineering firm SNC-Lavalin that built the superhospital and is leasing it back to the provincial government. The Journal de Montréal first reported the costly lease payments last week, prompting the MUHC’s patient-rights group to demand to know why one of the empty spaces hasn’t been rented out yet to a pharmacy.
“They’ve always promised us that a pharmacy would be coming, but we’re still waiting,” Pierre Hurteau, a member of the Central Users Committee of the MUHC, said in an interview.
“Why are we paying almost $1 million for empty space — space that could be used for a pharmacy we need — when the MUHC is in a difficult financial situation as it is?”
Hurteau added that parents often leave the emergency room of the Montreal Children’s Hospital — which is located at the Glen site in Notre-Dame-de- Grâce — with prescriptions that need to be filled right away. Although the Glen site does have an in-house pharmacy, it’s only for hospitalized patients.
Hurteau expressed skepticism about the explanation that the MUHC belatedly realized it was unable to sub-lease the space for a pharmacy because it’s close to the underground tunnel from Vendôme station.
Gilda Salomone, a spokesperson for the MUHC, said that authorities signed a lease with the consortium for the spaces in 2010 — even though construction would be completed only five years later. The Journal reported that the MUHC signed the lease in November 2015, seven months after the Glen site opened.
“When the lease was signed in 2010, there was no plan for an underground link to the métro,” Salomone explained in an email Thursday.
“At that time, (the consortium) was planning an above-ground link which did not, in any way, come into conflict with the spaces reserved by the MUHC for the pharmacy. When public authorities decided that a tunnel would be built only after substantial completion of the Glen, we had to delay renting out the two allocated spaces in S1 (the basement level) in order to avoid having to pay penalties during construction.”
“The spaces were not kept empty, but (have been used temporarily) for storage and as an exercise room for our employees,” she added.
Salomone did not clarify why if the space was good enough for employees to exercise, it was not good enough for a pharmacy.
The MUHC has since issued a call for tenders for a pharmacy, which Salomone said is expected to open in the S1 basement at the end of this year.
However, the $76.5-million tunnel — which was supposed to open in the fall of 2019 — has been reportedly delayed until the winter of 2020, raising the prospect that a pharmacy might not open for another year.
The MUHC has been renting four spaces of more than 8,600 square feet from the consortium at an annual cost of $537,464. The inability to sub-lease two spaces has added to the MUHC’s accumulated deficits, which in turn, have compelled the hospital network to make budget cuts eliminating the cancer survivorship program, among other services.
Under the public-private partnership (PPP) with the MUHC, the consortium is in charge of 35,000 square feet of commercial space at the Glen site. Some of that space has sat vacant because of the high rents the consortium charges.
“(As) part of the initial PPP agreement, the MUHC ... requested, for their own specific needs, to rent some of these spaces, for which we have signed a commercial lease,” Nicolas Ryan, a spokesperson for SNC-Lavalin, said in a statement Thursday.
Asked what the consortium thought of the fact that the MUHC does not yet have a commercial pharmacy, Ryan responded that the consortium “is always evaluating all opportunities that may arise for new businesses that would like to rent a commercial space at the Glen site.”
In January, the provincial government agreed to pay the consortium $108 million in addition to the $1.3-billion cost of the superhospital — a public-private partnership that was supposed to avoid any cost overruns.