The B.C. Liberal government has announced it’s moving forward with plans for the renewal of Burnaby Hospital, but Burnaby-Deer Lake NDP MLA Kathy Corrigan says she’s heard that line before.
“I think they are making an announcement yet again a year before an election that is entirely a political announcement,” Corrigan told the NOW. “They have used Burnaby Hospital as a political football for years, and in the end they’ve done nothing about rebuilding the hospital or building a new hospital.
The province announced last week it was starting work on a concept plan for the renewal of key facilities at the local health care centre, parts of which were built in 1952.
The plan will define the scope and budget for the expansion or renovation of the emergency department, surgical and diagnostic services and the replacement of some in-patient beds, according to a government press release.
The announcement sparked media reports the hospital had been awarded a $622-million upgrade and expansion, but the concept plan announced last week is only the first step toward getting government funding for only the first phase of the aging facility’s master site plan – a document completed more than three years ago.
And getting funding for even the first stage of the hospital’s redevelopment is likely at least two years away, according to Alan Grossert, Fraser Health’s executive director of facilities management and capital projects implementation.
While every project is different, Grossert told the NOW concept planning for a project like phase one of the hospital usually takes more than a year, and crafting a business plan takes at least as long.
“From our point of view, the project would only be approved once the business plan is approved,” Grossert said.
He said the province hasn’t given Fraser Health a deadline for the completion of the concept plan, and no timeline has been set for the project.
Corrigan, who has long called for the local hospital to be replaced, dismissed the project announced last week as “tinkering around the edges.”
“Essentially what they’re doing is they’re talking about moving some departments around,” she said. “They’re not building a new hospital. They’re trying to make this into something exciting after years of inaction, and there’s nothing there.”
The shortcomings of Burnaby Hospital’s infrastructure are well-documented, dating back to at least 2001, when a master plan recommended replacement of the north and west wings.
Deadly outbreaks of the superbug C. difficile have since been linked to the hospital’s cramped and aging infrastructure.
Fraser Health’s 2013 high-level master plan for the hospital also called for the replacement of the aging north and west wings.
The province has spent $36 million on upgrades at the hospital over the last 15 years, but Fraser Health director of strategic planning Andre Kroeger told the NOW two years ago that none of those projects has added any space to the facility.
The next step, he said in 2014, was to replace the north and west wings and expand the “technical heart of the campus.”
“The facilities are generally too small for current standards,” he said. “That’s the main issue.”
Corrigan isn’t confident the province is committed to changing that any time soon.
“They’re moving things around,” she said. “It’s like the Titanic. You’re heading towards an iceberg with that hospital, and they’re moving the deck chairs around.”
Health Minister Terry Lake, however, told the NOW every major capital project is “a journey” and making an announcement about the initial stages of the Burnaby Hospital redevelopment wasn’t just a political move.
“When you go to a concept plan, it shows you’re making progress, and it’s not just important for the people of Burnaby but for the people who work at Burnaby Hospital to know that this is happening, that there’s optimism that things are moving forward,” he said. “And in the concept plan, they’ll all have a voice in what they need as part of that phase one.”
When asked why it’s taken the province so long to move forward on phase one of the hospital’s three-year-old master site plan, Lake said the government only has so much money to go around and listed a number of projects that have already been approved, including the St. Paul’s rebuild and the Royal Columbian redevelopment.
Since Burnaby’s master site plan was completed before those two projects were announced, the Burnaby Hospital concept plan will also include new information about how a redeveloped Burnaby Hospital will fit into the region’s health needs.
Given that funding approval for even the first phase of Burnaby Hospital is still at least two years away, Lake said he gets why the announcement about the concept plan could appear political, but such announcements are part of the process, he said.
“We didn’t try to oversell it,” he said. “This is one step in the journey, and this is about looking at a phased approach knowing that we can’t do it all at once.”
