The need for a new hospital in Elgin County is undeniable.
“The population projections we’re looking at are quite staggering, and we need to make sure that we’ve got the health care resources ready for the community,” St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital (STEGH) CEO Karen Davies said in a presentation to Elgin County Council Tuesday.
Davies said “we need a new hospital” during her presentation to update council on the current state of STEGH, detailing the challenges they are facing daily.
“Having a heads up on what’s coming down the track is always beneficial because obviously it usually involves the county and local municipalities getting involved,” said Elgin County Warden Grant Jones.
During the presentation Davies laid out some daunting statistics - indicating that the STEGH sees 57,000 annual visits, equal to London’s University Hospital and surpassing Urgent Care at St. Joe’s.
If STEGH was built to today’s standards, Davies said the 70-year-old facility would have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) which would be 93 per cent larger. The Emergency Department would be 42 per cent larger and have 15 more patient rooms, acute inpatient would be 72 per cent larger, pharmacy would be 61 per cent larger and the Continuing Care Centre would be 138 per cent larger.
Elgin County is undergoing an economic boom with Amazon already present in the community, and Volkswagen’s new plant incoming. Davies said by 2033 the current facility would need to have 83 per cent more square footage and 149 per cent more by 2053.
“We’re involved right now in doing some master planning,” said Davies. “We’re working with architects right now to figure out what are the needs for the community today, 10 years out, 20 years out and 30 years out. We’re doing all of that planning today, knowing that today we don’t have enough space.”
STEGH brass will need to convince the Ontario Ministry of Health that despite their efficiency and high provincial ranking in several categories, they still need help.
“We have 50 hospital capital projects today happening across Ontario which is unheard of,” Sylvia Jones, Ontario Health Minister told CTV News.
“We’ll continue to make those investments because as we see people age, as the needs increase, we in our government need to be there”
She said as hospitals assess and review their existing facilities and infrastructure, there are regular and ongoing conversations with the Ministry of Health, and with Ontario Health regionally to see what projects need to be advanced.
“Last week’s announcement at London Health Sciences is a perfect example of that,” said Jones.
“We saw through the surgical center, a successful model, and they had and presented a proposal to the Ministry of Health, that wanted to build on that success. We were able to fund it and that project is moving forward. That’s how all hospitals approach it as they see, for example, their population aging or their population increasing. Then they work very closely with our ministry.”
During the delegation, Davies expressed disappointment that Elgin County did apply for a new HART Hub, but was denied.
Going forward, she notes that a new facility won’t be happening for at least 5-10 years. Currently they are landlocked with the current facility and are thinking of options moving forward.
She said there is $42.5 million in deferred maintenance for the hospital’s main building and $15.7 million for the south building over 25 years.
“Capital projects this year total $9 million, and we are getting about $2 million, so we need to prioritize every year,” said Davies.
“We are constantly prioritizing what is the greatest risk to the building. It’s a long game, and I still need that building to be safe and efficient today. It keeps me up at night.”
Going forward, Davies told council they need to submit a master plan to the Ministry, and after approval from their board, they hope to have that done by June.
“In that you have to submit three options for what your future could be,” said Davies.
“The options will be brand new greenfield site and then two hybrid options. The hybrid option would be to have potentially keep acute care and rebuild on the current site and put long-term continuing care offsite ambulatory care services. The other one would just have that reversed where they would build the acute care off site. You would keep that site for long term care in the term care services. It’s a long process - I’ll tell you, years.”
The boom is coming quickly, with a projected population of the city in 2051 is 79,500 with 20 per cent aged 65 or older.
