Construction begins on three-year $141-M expansion, renovation of St. Boniface Hospital ER

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This article was published 26/04/2022 (1269 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amid Winnipeg hospitals struggling with historic staff absenteeism, rising COVID-19 cases and patients arriving sicker and staying longer, the province unveiled plans for a long-awaited emergency department expansion at St. Boniface Hospital.

The $141-million modernization will triple the size of the ER and be ready to triage patients within three years, Premier Heather Stefanson said at a news conference Tuesday.

“This is going to be amazing,” Stefanson said, adding she hadn’t visited the hospital since the birth of her now-teenage son. “I look forward to coming back here in a few years to a state-of-the-art facility.”

The ER modernization will result in 18,600 square feet of renovations and another 86,200 sq. ft. added to the central Winnipeg campus. It is scheduled for completion in 2025.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon said the emergency department is expected to see up to 55,000 patients annually when the work is completed.

The Progressive Conservative government has been promising since 2017 an ER expansion at St. Boniface, as part of its health-care consolidation plan that saw three city hospital emergency rooms close. Now, 18 months ahead of the next provincial election, due by Oct. 3, 2023, the work has started.

Stefanson, Health Minister Audrey Gordon, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority chief executive officer Mike Nader and other officials donned hard hats and work boots after Tuesday’s news event to tour the demolition work.

The project is long overdue, said Nader, who, on April 22, sent a letter to WRHA staff saying the region’s “ability to transition admitted patients from our emergency department/urgent care is seriously impacted right now.”

On Tuesday, at St. Boniface’s I.H. Asper Institute, Nader applauded the modernization of the hospital’s ER.

“The current emergency room was built to meet the needs of generations past,” he said. “The new emergency department will meet the future needs of future generations.”

In 2019, St. Boniface recorded 48,000 visits to its emergency department; the province projects that number will rise to 75,000 by 2039.

The expansion will include a larger waiting room and triage area, expanded central resuscitation area, dedicated diagnostic imaging suite, private exam rooms, mental health treatment area, dedicated ambulance entrance and parking bay, covered south entrance to reduce congestion, improved south parking lot and a public-use outdoor garden space.

The head of the hospital’s emergency department, Dr. Paul Ratana, said staff are excited about the plans. A resuscitation room will be converted to a simulation lab for ongoing staff education and an end-of-life room will support those “difficult but important” final moments for patients and families, he said.

“The improvements resulting from this project will have an enormous impact on the system and for patients in our community,” Nader added.

“We are so excited to be providing a more welcoming, culturally safe and healing environment for families who need emergency services,” he said.

“We are equally excited to create an environment that can parallel the extraordinary services the women and men of the emergency room provide every day. Without them, there would not be an emergency department.”

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the PC government promised an expanded St. Boniface Hospital ER in 2017, 2019 and 2021. Even if the project is completed in 2025, it won’t address a larger systemic issue: a shortage of staff.

“How are we going to staff that emergency room?” Kinew said in a scrum with reporters. “We still haven’t seen a plan from the PCs to address that.”

The problem stems from the Tory government closing emergency rooms during its health-care system consolidation and its unwillingness to list to the advice of experts, Kinew said.

“Our system lost capacity, our system lost nurses. Now it’s the patients who are feeling the impact.”

— with files from Danielle Da Silva

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca