The first phase of Alberta’s newest hospital opened last week and Alberta’s health minister said the facility will be just as important for foothills residents as it will be for Calgarians.
“This facility will play a big role in improving health care in the surrounding area,” said Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne.
Premier Alison Redford, provincial MLAs, health officials and facility staff joined Horne to open the first phase of the South Calgary Health Campus on Sept. 6.
The $1.4 billion facility will be the largest hospital in Alberta with 300 beds, 11 operating rooms, 1,700 health professionals and 900 facility support staff.
Diagnostic imaging services are open and a new family medicine teaching centre clinic has started seeing patients.
Outpatient clinics will open later this fall. The emergency room is slated to open in early 2013, along with the operating rooms, intensive care beds and 269 acute inpatient beds. The maternity and neonatal intensive care units will open in summer 2013.
The facility is a teaching hospital for resident medical students from the University of Calgary as well.
Horne said the hospital will help to reduce wait times at other facilities.
“It’s going to make a difference,” he said. “Thirty treating rooms in the emergency department in this hospital alone is going to make a huge difference in wait times.”
The hospital opening will not lead to any bed closures in health facilities in the foothills, Horne said.
He said it will also help to free up space in the High River and Oilfields hospitals and the Okotoks Health and Wellness Centre and reduce wait times in communities across southern Alberta.
Redford said the building will become a “beacon” for what health care can be in the province.
“The entire south health campus is dedicated to wellness, it’s dedicated to the community,” she said.
The hospital has also been touted as a key part of efforts to help attract more doctors to Okotoks and the surrounding area.
Foothills physician Dr. Leslie Cunning said he is working to attract more doctors to Okotoks and foothills communities, through the Rural Physician Action Plan.
He said Okotoks’ proximity to the hospital will make Okotoks more attractive for physicians looking to establish a practice.
“It will be an indirect benefit having some additional resources there close by,” said Cunning.
