Advocates push for more details about expansion of Red Deer hospital

As the government reveals new information about expansion plans for the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, community advocates say the province should publicize a detailed timeline of construction goals for the project.

"I think everyone is a little skeptical," said Dr. Kym Jim, an internal medicine specialist and a member of the Society for Hospital Expansion in Central Alberta (SHECA). "And that's why we need to see some hard dates."

For years, central Albertans have said the 370-bed hospital is inadequate to handle the volume and severity of illness of patients it receives from the region, where about 500,000 people live.

Patients from Rocky Mountain House to Consort have been diverted to other hospitals, waited days for emergency surgery or languished in hallways while waiting for an inpatient bed.

Multiple governments have committed to redeveloping it, but nothing has changed.

Last February, the United Conservative Party government pledged to fund a $1.8-billion expansion of the hospital, with about 10 per cent of the funding budgeted in the next three years.

The announcement, which included $100 million in funding already pledged in 2020, promised a 200-bed expansion to the building, the construction of a cardiac catheterization lab and the addition of three operating rooms, bringing the total to 14. The project would be complete by 2030-31, the government said.

"That created a heightened sense of expectation in the community," Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston said in an interview Thursday.

What followed was silence about what the site redevelopment would look like, where they were going to put 200 more beds, and when residents would see shovels in the ground, among other questions, Johnston said.

Red Deer city council contacted Premier Danielle Smith's new cabinet ministers as soon as they were sworn in last week to press their case, and Johnston met with Infrastructure Minister Nathan Neudorf on Wednesday.

Neudorf declined an interview for this story. His press secretary, Benji Smith, said in two emails the plan is to add new floors on top of the existing hospital building, and construct a new ambulatory care building on the site in an area that is now a gravel parking lot. They will also renovate the existing building.

Smith said the sequence is undecided, but that construction of the new building and additional floors will proceed first, followed by the redevelopment of the old hospital. He said the phased approach will allow the hospital to remain open throughout construction.

Although he did not say when construction is slated to begin, Smith said Alberta Infrastructure is planning what spaces and services the building will include.

The government intends to hire a designer in early 2023 to create a detailed plan for the complex, he said. It is on schedule to be completed by 2031.