A new Alternate Hospital Facility, adding 16 new beds will open sometime in January-February on Cartier St. at the site of the old J.W. Trusler public school.
The North Bay Regional Health Centre (NBRHC) will operate the newly renovated facility at a cost of $9.8 million. The province will be spending $7.3 million to support this expansion.
MPP Vic Fedeli announced it at a morning news conference, saying it will make it faster and easier for people in North Bay to connect to healthcare.
In addition, the NBRHC will also be receiving $6.1 million in one-time funding to assist with the Alternate Level of Care transition as well as the Alternate Hospital Facility transition. It's expected the funding will improve access, expand capacity, and decrease wait times.
“Our government has heard the call to invest in our healthcare system to support our aging population, and today we are delivering millions here in Nipissing,” said Fedeli. “These additional beds will increase capacity and improve access to care, ensuring even more people in the North Bay region are provided with the right care, in the right place.”
NBRHC President Paul Heinrich called the announcement "exciting" and said it's the first of its kind in the province.
"Our hospital has been under tremendous pressure with capacity issues for quite some time, and so we've been kind of on our back heels locally around the capacity in the overall system. So this is very important today. We're getting 16 additional beds and we're moving other beds to co-locate here.
See: 'Bed crisis' warns North Bay Regional hospital
"It's frankly a very exciting opportunity. it's an exciting day but we have much more work to do because the burden of chronic illness is going to increase 76 per cent over the next 15 years, so we're going to continue to plan and design our facilities so we can accommodate the demands of the patients that need us in this community in the future."
Heinrich explains that patient flow has a daily impact on patients seeking care, those waiting to be discharged, and trying to provide the care patients need.
"Today’s announcement will help ensure timely access to appropriate care for patients awaiting long-term care placement.”
"The Cartier site is an Alternate Hospital Facility (AHF) that provides people who no longer require hospital care with specialized services as they transition from a hospital to a long-term care home, retirement home, or other post-acute services. This ensures more hospital beds are there for those who need it most, while decreasing wait times to ensure more people, no matter where they are in their care journey, are receiving the care they need," says a news release.
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