BIG WINS IN HEALTH CARE
Calgary’s Foothills Hospital Home Lottery is taking strides to advance medical care and save lives in the southern Alberta. Here’s a look at howthey are accomplishing that goal, with your help.
Fthrough thick and thin, Janke says.
“We’re really grateful for the continual support,” she says, adding she knows of people who have been buying tickets regularly since the lottery began.
And with spectacular prizes available every year, multiple draws, and one-in-20 chances of winning, it’s no surprise that people come back every year.
This year’s grand prize is a $ 2.4- million estate home in Artesia at Heritage Pointe, located just south of Calgary. Built by Calbridge Homes, the Tudor-style home covers more than 5,700 square feet. The winner also receives an additional $50,000 cash.
Also up for grabs is a mountain villa in Canmore valued at $1.3-million (which also comes with a $50,000 cash) alongside dozens of other prizes ranging from luxury big-ticket vehicles such as the 2015 Mercedes-Benz SLK 350 Roadster and the 2015 Porsche Boxster and vacations like a 19-night European river cruise or trips to exotic Tahiti and Bora Bora, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Shanghai and other dream destinations.
And then there’s the many lifestyle and leisure prizes ranging from 65-inch Samsung curved TVs to GoPro and Nikon cameras, Campers Village gift cards and barbecues.
Janke says anyone who wins o ne of the smaller prizes gets their ticket put back into the draw for the grand prize.
This year’s early bird prize is your choice of a 2015 Ferrari California T or $250,000.
And there are other ways to win, including a Take 50 Add- On where the winner gets half the cash prize pool, currently at more than $1.4 million, and a Cash Calendar Add- On with draws for $10,000 each day in June including $25,000 every Friday.
Tickets for the main draw are $100 each, three for $250, five for $375, or eight for $500.
For more information, and to order tickets online, visit foothillshospitalhomelottery.com or call 1-888-541-5540.
You can also buy tickets in person at the Foothills Medical Centre, Rockyview General Hospital, Peter Lougheed Centre and South Health Campus, the Heritage Pointe show home or selected retailers in Calgary, Canmore and Nanton. or more than 20 years, Albertans have supported the Foothills Hospital Home Lottery; that’s because the millions of dollars raised each year through the lottery help keep the quality of health care at Calgary’s largest hospital at one of the highest levels in Canada.
Since the first lottery in 1993, more than $81 million has been raised to support excellence in health care, says Nicole Janke, Manager of Events and Lotteries with the Calgary Health Trust.
“All the money raised from this lottery supports the Foothills Medical Centre and goes toward large projects that ensure we have a state-of-the-art medical facility that serves all Albertans,” says Janke.
In 2013 — funded in part by the lottery — Foothills opened the $6-million interventional trauma operatingroom, the first of its kind in North America. The facility is double the size of a standard operatingroom, allowing more specialists to work on a patient, inparticular those with traumatic injuries and severe bleeding.
Another lottery-supported innovation was the $5.1-million cardiac hybrid operating room.
“This was huge for us, because this allows patients to get home quicker and we’re diagnosing them earlier,” says Janke.
The Calgary Health Trust works very closely with hospital personnel to understand what is needed and where the money from future lotteries should be directed, Janke says. Proceeds from the 2015 lottery, she says, are in part earmarked for upgrades to the Foothills’ neonatal intensive care unit.
“This will be on going for a while,” Janke says, adding it can take several years for enough funds to be generated by the lottery before a new facility or enhancement goes forward.
“These are long-term, multimillion-dollar projects. And the thing to remember is someday you or someone you know may need these facilities. The more support we can get, the faster we can get these facilities, programs and equipment up and running. It’s vital to keep the hospital up to date so that we can provide the best health care we possibly can.”
Foothills Hospital serves more than 1.5million people in southern Alberta, and even with Calgary’s boom-and-bust-economy, supporters of the lottery have stuck with it