Funding OK’d for reno of ER at Oliver hospital

Job among $2.6M worth of capital projects approved by regional hospital board

The emergency department at South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver will get a much-needed renovation with capital funding that gained preliminary approval Thursday.

It’s among a host of requests put forward by Interior Health worth $2.6 million that were approved by the board of the OkanaganSimilkameen Regional Hospital District.

The work at SOGH will relocate admitting services, and create new triage and waiting areas.

“The (current) lack of a dedicated triage area results in this task either not being performed, being performed by non-clinical staff, or conducted in a public area,” IH chief financial officer wrote in her report to the board.

New signage and a dedicated entrance for the emergency department are also in the works.

The project is expected to cost $970,000, with the hospital district’s 40 per cent share ringing in at $388,000.

Interior Health also plans to spend $3.5 million upgrading existing infrastructure at Penticton Regional Hospital before it hands over maintenance of the facility to the private-sector consortium it hired to design, build, finance and maintain the new patient care tower. The hospital district’s share in that is $1.4 million, although $800,000 was approved previously.

Among the less expensive capital projects on Interior Health’s to-do list are flooring replacement at SOGH and the Summerland Health Centre, a sewer line at the Princeton General Hospital and a general radiographic system for the South Similkameen Health Centre in Keremeos.