Tories revive stollery funding

About-face on $23M expansion of children's hospital called bid to turn tide of bad medical news

By Richard Warnica, Edmonton JournalAugust 30, 2009Comments (11)

Critics on Saturday blasted Premier Ed Stelmach's surprise announcement that the Stollery Children's Hospital's emergency room expansion will go forward.
A health-care advocate accused the government of trying to turn the page on weeks of bad medical news by re-announcing a$23-million expansion of the overcrowded pediatric unit.
Friends of Medicare executive director David Eggen called the announcement--which was made by Stelmach at a golf tournament in Jasper on Friday --a "desperate" piece of "recycled" news.
"They're just digging around to try to mitigate all the cuts they've been making," Eggen said. "They're desperate to send some positive message out there."
Money for the expansion was first announced last August and construction was supposed to have begun this spring.
But, when the provincial budget came down in April, the money was frozen and the project deferred indefinitely.
Liberal health critic Kevin Taft called the decision to restart the expansion the right one, but called the delay of more than four months costly.
Taft, whose Edmonton riding includes the Stollery, said excavators were literally on-site and ready to begin work when the project was stopped.
"This is the kind of bumbling and mismanagement of decisions that costs our health-care system and the people who need it so dearly," Taft said. "In the end the right thing gets done, but how much extra pain and cost gets incurred by this decision is beyond measure."
Health Minister Ron Liepert defended the delay.
Liepert said Saturday the province's fiscal situation forced the government to review all major capital projects.
In this case, he said, they had to consider the possibility that space vacated in the University of Alberta Hospital by the opening of the Mazankowski Heart Institute might have provided a cheaper way to expanded the Stollery. Once that was ruled out, he said, the project was allowed to move forward.
Liepert also rejected Taft's charge that the delay may have been costly, arguing costs of construction have gone down in recent months.
"I think there's no question that the amount of money allocated will cover the project today. It may not have covered it a year ago," he said.
"At that time we were running 25-per-cent escalation on our construction projects. That's not going to happen today."
The province is contributing $18 million to the project. The remaining $5 million will be covered by the Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation.
The Stollery had more than 24,000 ER visits in the last fiscal year, more than double the roughly 12,000 it averaged when it was officially opened in 2001.
For the past 18 months, overflow patients from the unit have been treated in a large tent set up outside.
Bruce Wright, the assistant director of the Stollery's emergency department, said the tent will be closed once construction on the expanded unit begins.
Wright said patients who would otherwise be treated in the tent will be rerouted to units with extra space until the project is complete.
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