KGH desperate for a booster
The sprinkler system at Kelowna General Hospital is riddled with tiny holes that could trigger a major flood, health officials say.
Replacement of the sprinkler pipes on the hospital’s main floor, at an estimated cost of $500,000, is among the capital projects Interior Health plans to undertake this year in the Central Okanagan.
The capital upgrades — including four new ultrasound machines, surgical equipment to open two new operating rooms, and a new laser capable of performing “virtually bloodless procedures” — will collectively cost $27.5 million.
Kelowna-area taxpayers are being asked, through a levy collected on property tax notices, to contribute $9.8 million toward this year’s capital plan.
One notable change from the capital plan approved last year is that IH has dropped a $20-million plan for a new parkade at KGH.
“Rather than build a single parkade we have determined that the preferred solution is to acquire land with close adjacency to the Kelowna General Hospital campus and to develop surface parking lots on those properties,” IH’s chief financial officer Sylvia Weir writes in a report to Central Okanagan Regional District.
In early 2019, Kelowna city councillors heard from municipal staff that IH said there was a shortage of as many 400 parking stalls just for KGH staff. Parking has long been an issue at the hospital for employees, visitors, and residents of the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Every February, IH sends its capital funding request to the regional district, made up of politicians from Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country and Peachland. After approving the request, the regional district apportions the costs to taxpayers in each community.
In 2020, the typical Kelowna homeowner paid $188 in hospital taxes, in addition to municipal taxes, parcel taxes, regional district taxes, school board taxes, library taxes, BC Assessment Authority taxes and Sterile Insect Release program taxes.
The letter from Weir to RDCO provides these details on the proposed capital plan:
— The main floor sprinkler replacement is considered urgent. “There is a potential for a major rupture which could cause extreme damage to hospital equipment and infrastructure,” Weir says.
— Relocating the Outreach Urban Health Centre on Leon Avenue, which among other things provides services to those with drug addictions, to a “nearby location that provides a larger space more suited to serving patients and clients safely and indoors.”
— A Holium laser “used for urology surgery and provides cutting, ablation, and coagulation properties for precise, virtually bloodless procedures.”