Problems at Burnaby Hospital highlighted in a recent review of Fraser Health have renewed calls for a new facility.
“We need a new hospital in Burnaby, and nothing is being done about it,” NDP Burnaby-Deer Lake MLA Kathy Corrigan told the NOW last week. “It was promised before the (2001) election, and it has not happened. Now it’s not even in the long-term capital planning.”
The Fraser Health review – ordered by Health Minister Terry Lake last fall and released last week – reported Burnaby Hospital was among the worst in Canada for indicators like hospital-acquired infections and fractures, readmission rates, and treating patients with fractured hips within 48 hours.
Some of the most damning data in the report was two years old, and hospital executive director Cathie Heritage said significant improvements have been made since then.
Fraser Health interim CEO David Ostrow agreed the hospital has done innovative work, like addressing emergency room overcrowding and reducing C. difficile infection rates that have been linked to dozens of deaths in recent years, but he said the facility is limited.
“Certainly from a design perspective, many of the inpatient areas at Burnaby need pretty massive renovation, and I’m sure you and the community know very well that we don’t have the kind of single-bed rooms, good-quality infection control and all of that,” Ostrow told the NOW. “People have done some dramatic things with the facilities the way they are in order to bring down some of the bad infection rates that were present before, but there’s a limit to what you can do.”
Last week, for example, the Hospital Employees’ Union raised concerns that emergency overcrowding could be compromising patient and worker safety.
The shortcomings of the facility are well-documented, dating back to at least 2001, when a master plan recommended replacement of the north and west wings, built in 1952 and 1958 respectively.
Fraser Health’s 2013 high-level master plan for the hospital also called for the replacement of the aging north and west wings.
But that doesn’t mean that work is on the horizon.
Ostrow said overcapacity is a complex issue, and Fraser Health is now focusing on improving the efficiency of admitting patients and moving them through the hospital.
“Probably many people would argue some of the most important things are developing better primary-care mechanisms to prevent people from coming into the hospitals in the first place,” he said.
The health ministry, meanwhile, “continues to work with Fraser Health on priorities they identify at this site and other sites, with a focus on building community health-care services to reduce the demand on the hospital,” according to an emailed statement from a communications officer.
The email said Fraser Health’s highest priority is the redevelopment of Royal Columbian Hospital.
Burnaby Hospital has had about $35 million worth of physical improvements since 2001, the email went on to say, including $5.5 million in upgrades last fiscal year.
None of those projects, however, has added any space to the hospital, according to Fraser Health director of strategic planning Andre Kroeger.
The next step, he said, is 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 told the NOW. “That’s the main issue.”
This spring, the Fraser Health capital steering committee directed Kroeger to take a closer look at those three parts of the hospital.
“It’s very promising,” he said. “It means somebody’s interested; maybe they want to fund it, maybe they just want to understand it, but they’re asking more information.”
Ostrow favours rebuilding the hospital piecemeal at its current location as recommended in the master plan.
“The nice thing about this is you don’t have to wait until the government miraculously has a billion dollars to build a new campus,” Ostrow said. “You can actually prioritize and with a program over a number of years gradually make changes to this hospital to keep up with the demand.”
But when exactly the government plans to fund even the next step in that transformation is beyond Ostrow’s ken.
“We’re just gathering more information right now. I can’t say what’s going to happen,” he said.
