?They closed the wrong hospital.?
That?s what Sask. Party MLA and former finance minster Rod Gantefoer told me in March when we were discussing the new helicopter air ambulance service project he is spearheading. It seems there is no room at the Pasqua or General hospitals in Regina to put a helipad. They?ll have to put it on the roof of the General. On the other hand, the Plains Health Centre, which Roy Romanow?s NDP government closed in 1998, had ample room for a helipad. Indeed, my wife, who took some of her nursing training there, seems to recall an area roughed out for a future helipad not far from the emergency room.
It got me thinking about a recent press release from the provincial government. In March, the province declared we had hit 1,050,000 for the first time. That?s five per cent more than our decades-long flirtation with a million people. We gained 15,078 in 2010, a population just under the size of Yorkton.
(I?m pretty sure the Sask. Party writes in invisible ink ?Take that, NDP!? at the bottom of these releases.)
More importantly, that extra 50,000 people is the equivalent of adding the cities of Prince Albert and Yorkton, combined. What happens if, in a few years, we hit 1.1 million? Then 1.2 million five years after that?
For decades, we?ve been able to float along with services meant for a million people. But we are soon going to come to the point where we will need to start expanding government services, particularly in health care. While highways can easily absorb incremental growth, that?s not so much the case with hospitals.
In the past, we may have been overbuilt, with a hospital every 20 miles in the countryside. With a province going bankrupt in the early 1990s, there had to be cuts somewhere. But who then would have projected such substantial growth now? Apparently not the government of the times, who thought the best use of a base hospital was to turn it into classrooms.
During the growth of the 2010s, we are going to need some of those beds closed in the 1990s.
The Plains was built for $9 million between 1970 and 1974, according to the Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan. A bargain, when you look at today?s numbers. To replace it, I would conservatively guess the cost will be well over $300 million. I base that on the $200 million the province has slated for the new 164-bed children?s hospital slated for Saskatoon (really an addition to Royal University Hospital).
The addition of the children?s hospital will take some of the pressure off the system in northern Saskatchewan, freeing up beds for other purposes. Southern Saskatchewan is seeing phenomenal growth. Look at the incredible housing shortages in the southeast Saskatchewan oil patch. With all this population growth, there will eventually be a need for more hospital beds. It may be better to consider adding these at one site, in Regina, where they can take the pressure off the top end area of health care.
As my discussions with Mr. Gantefoer related, if there?s no room for so much as a helipad at the remaining two hospitals in Regina, then I doubt there?s much room for expansion. Ergo, Regina will, within 10 years, likely need a new hospital.
The irony is the best thing to do would be to revisit the concept of the Plains - a hospital easily accessible on the edge of town, with lots of room for future growth. The best place to build it would probably be at the corner of the Wascana Parkway and Ring Road, right across the street from the former Plains, where there would be plenty of room for all the helipads and parking you require.
We simply can?t serve a population of 1.1 million or more with services built for a million, and we?re going to be hitting that number very soon - likely within three years.
Just watch - in the coming years, Saskatchewan will be travelling back to the future, and will eventually rebuild the Plains. Kind of makes you wish they never closed it in the first place, huh?
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
