Doctors are resisting the design of a proposed tower at Kelowna General before it’s even been approved.The provincial government is mulling over a multi-storey building that would be erected in the current parking lot in front of the hospital. Health officials are referring to it as an ambulatory-care centre, something doctors are cringing at.“I feel uncomfortable when people use that term. It means the focus is on ambulatory care, which is not what we need,” said Gary Goplen, a neurosurgeon and president of the Kelowna Medical Society.“We need in-patient beds and in-patient operating rooms, with ambulatory care added as ell.”Patients who don’t need admission to hospital will undergo day surgery, diagnostic procedures or therapy in the new ambulatory clinic — orifice scoping, for example, pacemaker installation or cardiac-stress testing. The tower, budgeted for about $105 million, is designed to feature parking, an expanded ambulatory-care facility, six new operating rooms (three of them shelled for future use) and a renal-dialysis program, hospital administrator Rick Riley said last spring. One of the floors is set aside for medical students at UBC-Okanagan by 2010, he said.Jeff Eppler, chief of emergency, is all for a new tower to expand the hospital’s physical space. But he’s afraid health officials will devote too little room for what KGH really needs – more surgery and beds.“People are coming here for more and more complex surgeries from all over. Those people won’t be serviced by an ambulatory care centre,” he said. Eppler is not opposed to ramping up the number of day surgeries at KGH. But the hospital is not keeping up with demand, he said. “I know surgeons are here until late at night doing cases that should have been done in the daytime. . . . It’s ridiculous. We are under-resourced.”“We need more beds. People hate that. I’m all in favour of improving utilization . . . making sure the beds are used appropriately . . . but it doesn’t change the fact we have fewer beds than we had 10, 12 years ago. And yet the population has grown enormously.” The hospital now has nine operating rooms and an ambulatory care wing many say is too small. Goplen wants the tower to feature a full-service surgical suite that offers “many” operating rooms and cardiac surgery. “If ever there was a time to overbuild a hospital, it would be in Kelowna now. If we had a tower with more beds, ORs and ambulatory care, we could do a lot more for people in a much more timely fashion,” he said.Health Minister George Abbott said Tuesday he’s confident KGH will receive new capital investment. He has seen tower plans that include an expanded ambulatory-care centre. As for a new surgical suite, he said: “It may well be part of the discussions ongoing.”
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