Doctors are telling British Columbia’s health minister to hold off construction of the new tower at Kelowna General Hospital until a second tower is approved.Hospital staff are happy the province has approved funding for the four-storey ambulatory care centre at KGH. But the centre will do little to alleviate patient overcrowding and surgery backlogs because it won’t include new in-patient beds, said Dr. Stephen Vallentyne, chair of the Central Okanagan Medical Advisory Committee.“Thank you, the ambulatory care funding is appreciated, but it’s not enough. It won’t help us deal with overcrowding and the cancellation of surgical slates. To do that, we need another tower,” Vallentyne said.
The ambulatory tower will allow for more outpatient surgeries, a short-stay unit, renal dialysis, diagnostics, space for medical students and a heliport. It’s expected to be built by 2010, and it will allow the overcrowded emergency department in the old hospital to double in size.A second tower may be coming. A steering committee representing five B.C. health regions has recommended expanding cardiac services in the Interior using KGH as its hub. Cardiologists have worked for years to build a tower at KGH that would offer open-heart surgery, angioplasty and other operations now available only at the Coast. Health officials are calculating the cost of building the expansion, and the accounting should be completed by month’s end.
Vallentyne met with Health Minister George Abbott late Friday to press for a comprehensive plan that includes 20 large operating rooms for cardiac and non-cardiac surgeries and more in-patient beds in the second tower.“If we don’t get cardiac surgery money that we can twin with ambulatory care centre money, we’re not addressing our problem here,” Vallentyne said.“Is the ambulatory care centre really going to target the population now coming into KGH, a backup emergency room and having urgent surgeries cancelled? I don’t think so.”Building the ambulatory care centre will cost as much as $150 million.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has been inundated with funding requests from other over-stretched hospitals in the province.Victoria has yet to approve funding, but plans for the second tower are underway, Murray Ramsden, CEO of Interior Health, said last week.“(The ambulatory care centre) is only a piece. And we’re going to continue to work on the next tower,” Ramsden said.Vallentyne met with senior IH administrators earlier this week. He’s encouraging them to push hard for the expansion.“We want it all,” he said. “We want a comprehensive package so we don’t have to go back to (the government) Treasury Board with multiple requests and multiple delays.“We need that comprehensive package now, not in the next phase. Only the (health) ministry and Treasury Board can change that.”
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