BACKGROUNDER

FORT ST. JOHN HOSPITAL AND RESIDENTIAL CARE PROJECT

The Fort St. John Hospital and Residential Care project will bring together a rural acute care hospital and residential care facility to a single site. This co-location of facilities will reduce travelling time for users and staff, and is in close proximity to the airport – a travel time of approximately seven minutes. The new facilities will be located on a portion of a 16-hectare “greenfield” site, located between 86th Street and the 79th Street Bypass road.

The facilities will be linked together by an indoor passage-way, eliminating the need to venture outdoors when transferring patients for health care services. The integration of the hospital and residential care facilities will allow patients, doctors, hospital staff and visitors to flow seamlessly back and forth, reducing exposure during the winter season, when climatic conditions can be severe.

The hospital is a two-storey, 15,000 square metre (approximately 161,459 square feet) building that will relocate, expand and modernize acute care services and programs currently provided at the existing hospital in the City of Fort St. John. Features of the new facility include:

• 55 acute care beds.
• Endoscopy suite.
• Two state-of-the-art operating rooms plus a procedure room.
• Ambulatory clinics, to include cancer care clinics and haemodialysis.
• Medical and surgical inpatient rooms.
• Intensive care unit.
• Separate maternity entrance and ward, with single-room maternity care.
• Emergency department two-and-a-half times the size of the ER at the current facility.

The residential care building is a two-storey, 7,500 square metre (approximately 80,729 square feet) building that will expand and modernize care services for seniors. Features of the new facility include:

• 123 residential beds.
• Palliative, psycho-geriatric and special care units.
• Elder friendly design and features.
• Individual rooms with en-suite bathrooms.
• Every room has a view to the exterior, with easy access to outdoor courtyards.
• Convenient access to diagnostic services in the acute care hospital.
• Retail and community meeting space.
• Shared daily living and dining space.
  

Combined design and innovation highlights of the new facilities include:

• Expansive use of windows for natural light, views and access to the outdoors to promote a healing environment and provide patients with a connection to nature.
• The facilities have been designed using the universal grid with standardized room configurations and the accompanying advantages of modularization – a proven innovation in health care that promotes maximum flexibility that allows for future expansion, while retaining clinical adjacencies with minimal disruption to existing operations.
• Innovative measures towards sustainability: An innovative engineered laminated timber structural deck system has been developed in partnership with a Canfor Mill, located in Fort St. John, for the construction of the residential care building. The structural deck system uses three layers of cross laminated 2’ x 6’ beetle-killed pine wood.
• Approximately six hectares of the 16 hectare site will not be developed, thereby providing future opportunities for expansion.
• The facilities will be built to achieve LEED Gold Certification. The facilities are designed to be high performance, energy-efficient and a healthy building.
• A spiritual room.

Northern Medical Program:

The new hospital will also include academic space for the Northern Medical Program (NMP), a partnership program between the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and University of Northern British Columbia. The NPM was established in 2004 to address the shortage of doctors practicing in northern B.C. communities. Students and residents that will be placed in Fort St. John working towards their medical degrees or residency will benefit from the onsite location and convenient access to the hospital and residential care facilities. The academic space will also be used for simulation facilities and other health professional education such as nursing.

Construction Schedule:

Construction of the new facilities is now underway. An early works agreement was initiated in June for this project to maximize construction during the short constructions season in Fort St. John. There are, on average, only 100 frost free days in Fort St. John and certain elements of construction must cease during the winter months. A schedule and a work plan that is responsive to the climate in Fort St. John has been implemented that will ensure the project is completed on-time by spring of 2012.