Rebuild or replace hospital

he summer doldrums may seem like an odd time to be thinking about the next provincial budget, given that it is almost eight months until Alberta’s finance minister will stand in the legislature to deliver the next annual spending and revenue plan.

But now, before the budget is carved in stone, is exactly when Edmonton and its MLAs ought to aggressively make the case for the capital’s needs.

With assurances of funding for the southeast LRT extension delivered in spring, the city’s most significant infrastructure issue is the state and size of its west Edmonton hospital, the Misericordia — a matter clearly within provincial purview.

The Misericordia is a community hospital operated by Covenant Health that delivers a broad range of services one would expect from a big-city hospital. There’s an emergency room, a maternity ward and geriatric services, to name a few. It also has some specialties, such as post-cancer breast reconstruction, which Covenant Health says is a surgery performed more at the Mis than any other hospital in the area.

In March 2012, Alberta Infrastructure listed the 45-year-old, 303-bed hospital in “good” condition. That’s like saying a patient with congestive heart failure is in prime health. It doesn’t ring true, especially considering the litany of documents released through freedom-of-information requests by opposition parties in recent months that detail worries about the state of the hospital’s wiring and heating, as well as overall wear and tear. Then there’s the bad plumbing that resulted in two major floods in less than two years, the most recent earlier this month.

After day surgery, endoscopy and cystoscopy services were swamped by a cracked pipe, those services have been temporarily directed to other hospitals. A Covenant Health spokeswoman says those sections of the hospital remain closed for the summer and it will be months before the costs to recover from the most recent flood are totalled.

Two floods and countless pieces of paperwork outlining health and safety concerns from staff should be enough of a wake-up call for provincial officials to realize this aging hospital is falling to bits. Locusts or fire need not follow the floods for Alberta to get the message this hospital needs to be replaced.

It came as a surprise in the 2013-14 budget that a new or rebuilt Misericordia was not listed anywhere within the scope of the three-year capital plan. It is promising that Health Minister Fred Horne recently said a new west Edmonton hospital is at the top of the health infrastructure priority list.

It will take about five years and an estimated $1 billion — using the new South Calgary Health Campus as a yardstick — to build a new hospital.

And it remains a question as to whether the hospital should be rebuilt in its current location, just east of West Edmonton Mall, or on a new greenfield site in the new western or southwestern suburbs. Both have merits and drawbacks. All kinds of health facilities — including doctors’ offices and Villa Caritas, an acute mental health facility — are near the current location and the future west LRT is planned near the site. A greenfield site could offer easier construction and easier access for the booming suburbs.

But first, the provincial government must commit to a plan, funding and a firm timeline for when the Misericordia will be rebuilt or replaced. A hospital so decrepit as to be on life support is a disservice to Edmontonians and staff.

This Progressive Conservative government has talked at length about building for a province of five million people. Edmonton adds thousands to its population every year. A new, full-service west Edmonton hospital must be added to the script.

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