It's not an April Fool's Day joke.
The official grand opening ceremony for the Humboldt District Health Complex (HDHC) will be held on April 1.
Kelvin Fisher, Director of Rural Health and Planning for the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR), announced the date of the official grand opening to this new integrated health care facility at the north end of the city on February 28.
"It's not an April Fool's joke," he laughed. April 1 was the date that worked best for all involved, including the Premier of Saskatchewan.
Premier Brad Wall, along with Minister of Health Don McMorris and Minister of Education and Humboldt MLA Donna Harpauer, will be attending the grand opening ceremony on Friday, April 1. Representatives of the SHR board and the senior leadership team, and many other staff members will also be there, and members of the community are, of course, invited as well.
"We are really pleased," Fisher said, that Wall will be coming to Humboldt.
"We know this is a big project for this government, so we're really pleased the Premier was able to confirm his attendance."
However, the HDHC will not be open for business by April 1.
"The grand opening, I want to emphasize, is before the actual move," Fisher said.
Holding the grand opening before moving staff and patients into the facility will allow both dignitaries and members of the public to tour the new facility without encroaching on anyone's privacy.
Many of the details of the grand opening have yet to be worked out. However, Fisher noted that tours of the facility will likely begin immediately after the grand opening ceremony, and will continue for at least a couple of days.
Information on how members of the public can schedule tours of the building, and exactly when they will take place, will be coming soon.
After the tours, the building will be closed for a hospital-grade cleaning for a few days, and the move from old building to new will begin after that point.
Further details about the move will be forthcoming, Fisher promised.
According to the original construction schedule, the HDHC was set to open last October. However, at the end of November, the SHR announced that due to delays in construction, in addressing deficiencies in the building, and with the late arrival of some flooring material, the official opening and move was pushed back to March.
This announcement followed another made by the SHR in mid-October of 2010, which stated that the move would occur sometime after October 30, when their goal for some time had been to move in sometime during that month.
