Local officials got an update on the new building at the East Kootenay Regional Hospital in Cranbrook that will contain expanded renal and oncology departments, however, some questions remain.
Namely, what to do with a $15 million contribution from Elk Valley Resources (EVR).
Elected officials with the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District took in a presentation from Interior Health officials during a meeting on June 13.
Originally, the hospital district wanted to include radiation therapy into the new building, however, that was nixed by the Ministry of Health due to costs, infrastructure challenges, and concerns the service would be underutilized in the East Kootenay.
Announced by the province earlier this year, the $59 million project is a planned two-storey building that will contain all renal services on the first floor, while the second floor will provide spaces that support an increase in oncology services.
Since then, the hospital district has been advocating for the addition of a third floor by utilizing the donation from EVR, however, an Interior Health representative told the board that the health authority is "unable to proceed with scope change for additional floor."
Adding another floor would cost a minimum of $30 million.
David Wilks, the mayor of Sparwood and the chair of the hospital board, bluntly expressed his frustration.
"I am beyond disappointed with this," Wilks said.
Teck had previously made the $15 million commitment towards "nuclear medicine" at EKRH before the sale of Elk Valley Resources to Glencore. As part of the sale's regulatory requirements for federal approval, Glencore had to maintain that commitment.
WIlks argued that a SPECT-CT Scanner — a piece of equipment at EKRH that utilizes nuclear medicine to produce images from two different types of scans — fulfills that requirement.
The addition of a third floor could contain an expanded laboratory that stores the necessary elements needed to complete a SPECT-CT scan and fulfills the 'nuclear medicine ' requirement.
"We direly need that room at EKRH because we are bursting at the seams," Wilks said. "We are over capacity on any given day. It is just a matter of time before that hospital has a catastrophic event that will be not good for anyone.
"At least by moving the lab, and then moving oncology and renal, it gives us an opportunity to look at how we can deal with that emergency room. Because right now we can't, there's no room."
For cost-sharing capital health care infrastructure projects, the province provides 60 per cent of the funding, while the hospital district provides up to 40 per cent through property taxes within the district's jurisdiction.
Regardless of what it the total cost would be to add in a third floor, Wilks argued that the EVR donation should be used for that purpose. From there, whatever the remainder, the hospital district would be happy to pay it's 40 per cent share, as the province provides its 60 per cent share, he said.
However, the province is not interested in adding a third floor to the building, based on a conversation Wilks said he had with a high level official within the infrastructure ministry's office.
In contrast, Wilks argued that the province "had no problem" stepping up to provide it's cost share of a $75 million increase to the F.W. Green Home redevelopment project — a $232 million long-term care project of 150 beds in Cranbrook — and approaching the board to ask for the district's cost share.
Looking at the cost increase to the F.W. Green Home redevelopment project — $156.5 million when it was announced nearly two years ago to $232 million revealed earlier in the same hospital district meeting — Wilks says he expects the $59 million renal and oncology building to follow a similar trend.
"It won't be $60 million, it will be $120 million and that's what I would direct to the CFO [Chief Financial Officer] to start saving for. So I think our cost is going to be $50 to $60 million," WIlks said. "And that scares the bejeezus out of me when we're not making any improvements to EKRH as a whole, because we're not moving anything. We're just adding on and adding on."
