2001 to be wrap-up year: Woods

More than about new beginnings, 2001 will be a year when district residents see several health care-related endeavours come to fruition, the CEO of Riverside Health Care Facilities Inc. said Tuesday.
“It’s been a successful year overall. We got underway on the Emo hospital, and with the dialysis unit,” Wayne Woods noted.
“And it’s all happened with the support of the community and our staff,” he stressed, applauding initiatives such as the “Care Close to Home” campaign and the Aboriginal Diabetes Dialysis Initiative.
“I was at the Emo hospital on Friday and everything is coming along as planned,” Woods said of the $3.3-million renovation going on there since last May.
“The top floor is right on schedule and in a couple of weeks, staff will go in and clean it up, move in furniture, and basically get ready to get fully operational,” he added.
While some work on the basement will continue into next month, the 15 beds–12 long-term care and three acute care–will be located on the main level along with other patient services.
Meanwhile, the hemodialysis unit is slated to be operational at La Verendrye hospital here by this May, said Woods.
The unit, to be located in the west wing of the ground floor, will be run by both experienced staff from Thunder Bay and staff from here, who will receive 20 weeks in training.
Once operational, up to 24 district patients will benefit from its services. Woods said he knows of about 20 residents currently in need of the treatments.
The treatments will be available six days a week here. District dialysis patients now take treatments three times a week, usually in Thunder Bay.
And looking further ahead into 2001, Woods said plans for the $8-million renovation earmarked at La Verendrye are still “being discussed.”
The plans are expected to be submitted soon to the Ministry of Health, with renovations underway by late spring. The extensive overhaul could take 18 months to two years to complete.
In related news, Riverside Foundation for Health Care’s “Care Close to Home” campaign finished 2000 with a bang.
The campaign, which aims to raise funds for the renovations at district hospitals, last reported it had surpassed $3.3 million–just $200,000 short of its goal.
But as mail-in pledges continued to come in after the campaign’s last official announcement in mid-December, whether its goal was reached before Dec. 31 has yet to be confirmed.