Penticton Regional Hospital New Patient Care Tower

Penticton Regional Hospital New Patient Care Tower

On July 30, 2014, the B.C. government announced approval of the business plan for a new patient care tower and parkade at Penticton Regional Hospital.

EllisDon has installed a live webcam to monitor construction progress of the Patient Care Tower. It takes a photo every minute and allows you to get a look at what’s happening right now at the site.

The Penticton Regional Hospital Patient Care Tower will be a six storey, 26,155 square metre (281,530 sq. ft.) health-care facility. This project will improve access to services and improve patient care through the consolidation of programs currently distributed throughout the hospital.

The Penticton Regional Hospital Project will be constructed in two phases. Phase one includes the construction of a new patient care tower and parkade. The tower will feature:

• A new ambulatory care centre with outpatient services including cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, respiratory, pre-surgical screening, maternal/child clinics, and lab
• Satellite medical imaging
• Surgical services including 5 operating rooms, 3 minor procedure rooms, 2 endoscopy rooms, 1 cystoscopy room, PICC line/urodynamic room; and infusion services
• 84 inpatient beds in single patient rooms each with its own washroom
• A new medical device reprocessing unit
• Space for the UBC Faculty of Medicine Program

Phase two involves the renovation of vacated areas in the current hospital to allow the expansion of the emergency department into a space almost four times the size of the current department, as well as renovations to existing support areas of pharmacy, laundry and materiel (supplies and equipment) stores. The construction of the new tower and renovations to the existing building will take about three and a half years which is estimated to begin in 2016.

The patient care tower is efficiently-designed to be patient-centred and elder friendly. It will support employee and physician recruitment by offering the opportunity for medical professionals to work in a newly-designed clinical environment designed to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold-certified.

The total capital budget for the project is $312.46-million. The Okanagan-Similkameen Regional Hospital District is providing $117-million, the South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation is contributing $20-million, Interior Health is providing $14.4-million and the provincial portion is $161.1-million.

It is expected that the project will create more than 1,910 jobs for workers over the life of the project.

The PRH patient care tower project is a partnership between the B.C. Ministry of Health, Interior Health, the Okanagan-Similkameen Regional Hospital District, South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation and EllisDon Infrastructure.