The new long-term care facility located on the former Mount St. Francis Hospital site is on track to be finished construction late 2024.
The facility, dubbed the Nelson Health Campus, will offer 75 -long-term care beds to patients whose needs require regular long-term medical care.
Additionally, the facility will also have a community services building which will house mental health and substance use services along with a variety of public health and community resources
The project is being developed collaboratively with Interior Health leasing the building from Golden Life Management and the Columbia Basin Trust.
Construction has been underway since last fall, but the planning began well before then, stated Lannon De Best, director of community operations with Interior Health.
“The announcement about new long-term care beds came well before construction began. It was a process to identify a builder who was whiling to take this on, but right now the building is well underway.”
De Best says that the long-term care component’s structure is well formed and on track for a 2024 completion. Construction on the community services side is also underway.
The long-term care facility is not age restrictive, clarified De Best. He says patients who qualify can require a variety of different long-term medical services, and that IH has not yet begun the admission process to occupy the beds.
Applicants will be triaged based on their needs and location to determine whether they match the resources provided by the long-term care services.
“The process will be done through an assessment with our home and community care team while they’re either at home or in a hospital. Once that assessment is done, and a match is determined, the individual has the right to choose a preferred location and wait to receive acceptance to that location, if they’re waiting from home.”
Patients waiting in a hospital will be prioritized first, De Best explained
For the community services component, IH will relocate the medical services currently located on Gordon Road and at the health center on Victoria Street, over to the new facility.
“The services that are offered include early childcare, folks who need to have their dressings changed to need support with nursing services, not necessarily physician services. All of those are still located in primary care centers and family doctors offices.”
The community and long-term care services won’t be available till at least late 2024, said De Best who says staff recruitment hasn’t started yet.
However, he says they’re already working on strategies to fill the positions seeing as the province has a health care worker professional shortage which, as Premier David Eby stated a few weeks ago, has halted many projects like this one.
“We aren’t at the stage yet where recruitment has begun for the facility, so we still have time to enact our recruiting plan. We know though that there is a human resources challenge for health professionals.
“We have begun conversations with local schools that train healthcare professionals, care aides in particular, to look at implementing a plan to increase the number of students that might help support filling our vacancies.”
De Best says there are two goals for the facility: to add much-needed long-term care beds for residents who require the services in a community they’re familiar with, and to provide a new home for mental and community health services in a state-of-the-art building.