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Critical hospital overhaul to exceed $200 million
Doctor says emergency department needs complete restructuring

Tim Edwards
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 1, 2011

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The next legislative assembly will have to find ways to fund vital renovations to Stanton Territorial Hospital slated to cost more than the Deh Cho Bridge.

NNSL photo/graphic

Stanton Territorial Hospital's projected lifespan is to end in 2018, and already staff are feeling the need for top-to-bottom renovations, which Health Minister Michael Miltenberger is pegging at more than $200 million. It would, however, cost around $500 million, he said, to build a new facility.

"Stanton needs some very, very critical work," said Health Minister Michael Miltenberger.

He said the complete overhaul of hospital facilities and technology is estimated to cost upwards of $200 million. The Deh Cho Bridge is currently set at $182 million.

"The final number will only be known when tenders are in," he said.

The project has been discussed for about 10 years, he said, and planning officially started in May. Construction, if all goes well, is tentatively slated for 2014-15.

One of the reasons the cost is so high, he said, is because the hospital will have to stay open while the construction is going on, and the crews will have to very carefully separate the construction areas from the areas that are still operational, to avoid contamination, dust or infection issues.

Miltenberger said the building, originally constructed in 1988, was built with a projected lifespan of about 30 years. These renovations, he said, will add another 15 years of life to it and are cheaper than the estimated $500 million it would cost to construct a new facility.

The need for renovations is well-known to frontline workers at the hospital. Dr. Anna Reid works in the emergency room and intensive care, which are on different floors, whereas she said the departments should be right beside each other. She said the whole area needs restructuring.

"Our emergency department is very, very small for the number of people we service," she said, giving another example.

Reid said long wait times in the ER are mostly just due to having nowhere to put new patients.

In having so little space, confidentiality becomes a huge issue. Reid said there is no place doctors can privately use the phone to discuss cases, and not even enough room and surface space for a doctor to sit and fill out charts and paperwork.

As well, patients have to be wheeled on stretchers through the waiting room to get to the radiology department from the emergency department for X-rays, again raising the issue of confidentiality.

"It's not ideal in terms of the patient experience and it's certainly very tiring and very difficult to work as a staff there," she said. "Having said that, I think we do a really good job out there - it's a very professional team."

The hospital renovation comes as belt-tightening budgets are projected for the next few years in order to drive down the territory's debt, which was projected in the 2011 budget to reach $515.8 million by March 2012, though Miltenberger, as finance minister, said $344 million of that will be financed through the revenue from things such as toll-collection at the Deh Cho Bridge and revenue from the NWT power and housing corporations.

This year there is $171 million set aside for capital projects, and last year there was $443 million, most of which came from the federal government's economic action plan. The 2011 budget put a yearly $75-million cap on capital investment for 2012-13 onwards.

This project flies way over that cap, and Miltenberger noted there are other priority projects on the table - a long-term care facility in Norman Wells, a new hospital for Hay River, "and that's just the Health (department), not to mention Transportation, Housing, Education."

As finance minister, he is trying to get the federal government to raise the territory's debt wall from its current $575 million limit, which he hopes will happen before the end of the final session of this legislative assembly in August.

Miltenberger said the GNWT is also going to look into the federal Public Private Partnerships Fund (P3), which provides money and encourages private investment in infrastructure projects.

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