Construction begins on new emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital
New ER for Winnipeg hospital was recommended in 2017 wait times task force report
The St. Boniface Hospital emergency department expansion and modernization is officially underway, the province says.
Premier Heather Stefanson and Health Minister Audrey Gordon made the announcement Tuesday morning at the Asper Centre mezzanine inside the Winnipeg hospital.
The $141-million undertaking will renovate 18,600 square feet of existing space and add 86,200 square feet of new construction, tripling the size of the current emergency department.
"The current emergency room was built to meet the needs of generations past. The new [emergency department] will meet the future needs of future generations," Winnipeg Regional Health Authority CEO Mike Nader said.
The new emergency department for St. Boniface Hospital was first envisioned after the final 2017 report from the province's wait times task force found the existing ER did not have the capacity to adequately handle the volume of patients at that time.
The report estimated that the hospital would see a 55 per cent increase in emergency patient volume due to the closures of emergency rooms at Seven Oaks, Concordia and Victoria hospitals.
"The physical space in the existing [emergency department] is old and inadequate even for current volumes of patients," the 2017 report's authors said.
A new emergency department for St. Boniface Hospital was highlighted in the report as an urgent priority and recommended that it be done before any closures.
Premier Stefanson was asked Tuesday why it took so long to start the project.
"The important thing is that it is moving forward," she said.
2019 election promise
Former premier Brian Pallister made the project an election promise for the Progressive Conservatives in 2019, and initially estimated it would cost $90 million.
The renovation now underway will include an expanded waiting room and triage area, an expanded resuscitation area and a dedicated diagnostic imaging suite with a new CT scanner and X-ray machine.
NDP leader Wab Kinew called Stefanson's news briefing "a re-reannouncement" and accused the PC government of scaling back on hospital capacity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We saw that with the third wave when we had to fly ICU patients out. Now we're seeing it again with these huge waits in emergency rooms," he said.
Waits at Winnipeg emergency rooms are as long as nine hours. The St. Boniface emergency department expansion won't be completed until 2025.
In 2019, the department received 48,000 visits, according to the province. The expanded facility is expected to accommodate 55,000 annual visits.
Based on population growth and an aging population, annual visits are projected to grow to an estimated 70,000 to 75,000 by 2039, the province says.
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