Demolition is slated to begin Monday and take four months as part of a long-promised expansion at the Misericordia Community Hospital.
Space for six ambulance bays, emergency waiting and treatment areas and diagnostics services are all promised as part of the expansion project. The new emergency department is expected to see 60,000 patients a year, according to a Friday news release.
The new emergency department will take the place of the chapel, west annex and already relocated Family Medicine Centre. The existing emergency department will remain open during construction.
Minister of Infrastructure Prasad Panda said in the news release that construction will begin this summer and continue until late 2022. The project is expected to create about 445 jobs during construction.
A new emergency department was first announced in the 2017 provincial budget, with construction set to begin in the spring of 2019. The price tag was set at $65-million for a space three times as large as the current one.
The current emergency department has a history of flooding issues. In August 2018, a flooded toilet forced the department’s temporary closure.
The hospital had a major flood in May 2013, when it had to cancel 46 elective surgeries and move 53 patients after a valve ruptured while a toilet was being repaired.
There were several smaller flooding incidents in 2014.