Today is moving day at West Nipissing General Hospital.
Due to renovations – the hospital is installing a new sprinkler system – the emergency room is moving to the operating room. Wait times may increase as a result, especially over the next few days as the move is completed and staff adjust to the new space.
All services remain, and the move will not affect emergency care, the hospital noted in a release. The work is expected to be completed in early to mid-March and the emergency room will return to its usual spot at that time.
Richard Beauchamp, the hospital’s Interim President, told BayToday, “We don’t expect that it’s going to have a significant impact on wait times.”
However, Beauchamp noted, “There will be some impact,” due to the change of space. “There’s never a good time to do work in the emergency department, and after Christmas, it gets busy with respiratory illnesses and gastrointestinal illnesses.”
“We’re extremely busy in the emergency department,” Beauchamp added. “In the next few days, we’ll get used to the new location, the new systems, and the new way of doing things and then we’ll go from there.”
See: Expect longer waits at Sturgeon Falls' hospital
As for the operating room, which is now the temporary home of the emergency room, that space was mostly used for scopes, specifically, colonoscopies. No surgeries are performed there. And anyone who had an appointment for scope work was informed months ago of the change.
Located at 725 Coursol Road in Sturgeon Falls, the West Nipissing General Hospital was built in 1977. Building codes were different then, and the hospital’s sprinkler system was inadequate by today’s standards. Some sections didn’t have sprinklers. In late 2022, the provincial government gave the hospital $1.6 million to bring the entire building to today’s codes. Some of that money also went to making washrooms more accessible.
After about five months, most of the work is complete, and all work should be done by the end of March.
Beauchamp said, “Overall, the work has gone very well, but it's obviously caused a lot of inconvenience. Almost every department has had to relocate at some point in time. And we can’t move the CAT scan or things like that, so you have to work around things.”
It’s a challenge at times, Beauchamp noted. “We’re basically taking the entire hospital and installing a sprinkler system but not closing down any services or activities in the hospital. It’s been an exercise in temporary relocation, and we’ve saved the biggest for last.”
West Nipissing General Hospital’s emergency department remains open 24 hours a day throughout the renovations.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
