Cost of Operating 2 shelled in floors at VJH. (A cheatsheet)

• It will cost $20 million to complete the two floors, which can hold 60 beds, and another $20 million annually to keep it running.
• VJH is funded for 148 acute care beds but daily occupancy generally runs above 100 per cent. “We are not sitting still,” said Pat Furey, VJH administrator. Twenty to 30 people a day in acute care beds  require residential care but they remain in the hospital until space can be found for them. Furey isn’t sure if opening the two floors will improve the situation. “Acute beds cost $1,000 a day (to operate) while residential are $125. If you are keeping residential patients in acute, that’s an expensive place to keep them,” she said. It could cost about $10 million to develop each of the shelled-in floors for use by patients, and then $10 million each annually to operate the floors.  IHA is currently soliciting bids to develop 46 new residential care beds in the North Okanagan and Furey says the goal is to discharge patients to the appropriate residential care or home care setting. “If we had 20 to 30 beds freed up, we’d have no  problem handling acute care flow.”
  
  • Lumby is getting 46 new publicly funded residential care beds. InSite Housing has signed a contract with Interior Health and provides independent, supportive and assisted living for seniors in the area. Work on the new facility is expected to begin in November and will likely be complete within one year. MLA Eric Foster says the new facility will be built in Lumby adjacent to the Health Centre. 
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  Don Quixote Note: I have put up this post to illustrate the costs that have been in the media for the shelled in flooring. 
• The costs for the operation of an acute bed are in the $800 to $1000 per day that seems to be in some studies that you can find on the internet. The $10,000,000 cost for the operations of these 30 beds per floor would come in at $913.24/bed/day.  (The $1000 /day/bed is a conservative budgeting figure)
• The capital cost of $10,000,000 per floor would be for the equipment required and would work out to $333,333 per bed and would be a 1 time cost. Whether the local hospital taxpayers would have to pick up 40% of this cost is unknown. 
• The local hospital taxpayer has picked up 40% of the costs of the Tower and 100% of the cost of having the shelled in floors available ( $10,500,000) from 2010 financial statements
• The costs of the 46 Lumby beds (residential care) and whether the Hospital taxpayer pays for 40% of the estimated costs is unclear to me.
• The Pleasant Valley Manor in Armstrong is part of the debt recoverable from taxation in the 2010 financial statements and debt stands at $3,822,900. Forty-two (42)  residential care beds were added to Pleasant Valley Manor in Armstrong. The expansion project cost approximately $10.2 million. The North Okanagan/Columbia Shuswap Regional Hospital District (NOCSRHD) funded 40 percent of the project, with the Government of British Columbia, through Interior Health, funding the remaining 60 percent. [PDF] MEDIA RELEASE 

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It appears that the Heartland pays for the capital costs of some residential beds if not all (Lumby ?). Does the lower mainland pay for their additional Residential care beds as the Capital Costs for the Hospitals is picked up 100% by the Provincial Government???

• The Editorial by Scott Neufeld of the local Vernon Courier in 2006 says it best:
  'What’s interesting to note is that municipalities within the Greater Vancouver Regional District do not charge their citizens a property tax.Instead the province has assumed their hospital debt. In plain terms, the provincial government collects money from all B.C. taxpayers to pay for Lower Mainland hospitals. But when it comes paying for hospitals in the rest of B.C., the message seems to be that if you want something – you’re going to have to pay for a lot of it yourself.
  
  
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    Would appreciate any comments especially re the figures and assumptions that I have used.