The new $1.4-billion Cowichan District Hospital is taking shape, with the walls and roof of the diagnostic and treatment centre now erected, Health Minister Adrian Dix said Thursday.
“Here you’re seeing the structural completion of one of the two key main buildings on this site,” said Dix. “It’s tangible. It’s profound.”
Work will now begin on the centre’s interior and continue on a seven-storey inpatient tower and service centre.
The project thus far is on time and on budget, said Dix.
While the new 204-bed facility at Bell McKinnon and Herd roads is on track for completion in 2026, it won’t be patient-ready until 2027.
The 56,448 square-metre new hospital, complete with a helicopter pad, will be three times larger than the current facility, including double the number of parking spots. All care areas will also expand.
Emergency-department spaces will increase to 36 from 17, and the ER will have two trauma bays, monitored care spaces and a dedicated acute psychiatric zone.
Operating rooms will increase to seven from four, with one room dedicated to C-sections, and surgical procedure rooms will increase to nine from three in the current hospital.
The new hospital will provide increased CT-scanning capacity and built-in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It will accommodate a 20-bed inpatient psychiatry unit with access to secure outdoor space and a four-bed psychiatric intensive care unit.
There will be a new birthing unit with room for 10 obstetrics beds, a nursery, a special-care nursery, as well as a space for mothers to give birth and stay in the same room with their infants until they are discharged.
The pediatric unit will double in bed count with eight beds, four of which can be used to provide care to pediatric mental-health and substance-use patients, so families don’t have to drive to Nanaimo or Victoria.
It will be the first fully electric hospital in B.C., with 80 per cent lower operational greenhouse gas emissions than the current hospital, built in 1967.
There will be “culturally safe spaces” to accommodate traditional Indigenous healing practices, foods, a gathering space, an Indigenous health department as well as a place to stay overnight for families visiting the emergency department if it becomes too late to return to a remote community.
The hospital will continue to be a training site for medical students and residents in the University of British Columbia Island Medical Program and other health professionals.
A Hospital at Home, piloted in Victoria and started last month in Cowichan District Hospital, will continue with a goal of providing at least 10 beds of acute care in people’s homes.
Funding for the new hospital is shared through Island Health, Cowichan Valley Regional Hospital District and Cowichan District Hospital Foundation.
Island Health board chair Leah Hollins said “it’s truly inspiring to see how far we’ve come.”
“We look forward to providing care in a larger, more suitable facility with healing spaces and modern equipment,” she said.
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