With Riverside Health Care Facilities Inc. and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care still working out the details over the plans for Phase IV renovations at La Verendrye hospital, CEO Wayne Woods said work should begin there next spring.
“We’re progressing to complete the drawings,” he noted. “We’ve been sending them back and forth for approval, folowing the Ministry’s reccomendations.
“It’s been a long process,” he added. The plans first were submitted to the government in mid-2001.
Woods noted the delay in the plans, which were approved as a whole by the ministry in February, has been a matter of fine-tuning.
“If everything stays on track, we’ll go out to tender in early spring,” he affirmed.
The $8-million-plus job, originally estimated at $5.5 million before the ministry’s recommendations, will include improvements or total overhauls to the X-ray department, emergency room, operating rooms, and lab, and a new location for the dialysis unit on the south side of the building.
The expansion also would include re-locating the dialysis unit, which has been operational at La Verendrye for about 10 months, and possibly a computed tomography (CT) imaging unit, which has the unique ability to image a combination of soft tissue, bone, and blood vessels–something Woods noted would be “very beneficial.”
“It’s one of the things we made space for in the plans. But it will have to be another we look at after we get this done. We’ll have to go through another process,” remarked Woods.
The extensive overhaul–which could take 18 months to two years to complete–will be funded by both the Riverside Foundation for Health Care’s “Care Close to Home” campaign and the provincial government.