Why

Amid calls for unity and support for the Picton hospital, a key question is overlooked

Katherine Stansfield says structural issues mean the existing Picton hospital can’t be renovated or adapted for current standards and future needs.

Absent from the discussion of a new hospital in Picton by a procession of healthcare administrators, physicians and volunteers was an explanation of the rationale for the project. Why does Picton need a new hospital? Why can’t the existing facility be renovated or remodelled to meet the needs of this community today and into the future?

It is not obvious to everyone in this community that a brand new facility in a new location will offer improvement over the current hospital.

For Dr. Elizabeth Christie, president of the Family Health Team, it is essential that a new hospital be built in Picton. Quite aside from inadequacies with heating and ventilation, and a shortage of washroom facilities, which are well known, she says the existing structure can’t be made to accommodate the physical needs of a modern hospital, and the cost and complexity of renovating the existing facilitate would be overwhelming.

There just isn’t enough room between floors to accommodate the technology and flexibility an up to date hospital requires, according to Dr. Christie. She says the very shape of the current hospital poses challenges to redevelopment. When it was built, PECMH was constructed as an L-shape—a formation described as reasonable. But with the addition of a new wing—the L became a U. That shape makes it difficult to separate functions of the hospital.

“It is harder to provide privacy for patients, to separate the messy part of hospitals from the hallways everyone travels through. Right now you go through everything to get everywhere. That is not ideal. It is not how modern hospitals are designed.

Dr. Christie says she is convinced PECMH needs a new building.

“I am not persuaded easily. It is a huge facility and we won’t be able to justify keeping 12 beds in the facility with its huge power plant.”

Katherine Stansfield has led the Picton hospital redevelopment plan for several years for QHC. She explained a thorough functional and engineering assessment of the existing building was done, and its suitability ruled out, as part of the requirements of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care in its application.

Echoing Dr. Christie, Stansfield explained that the existing hospital can’t physically be renovated to meet current standards, let alone future needs and requirements.

“It was a solid structure that served us well for many generations,” said Stansfield. “But when you look ahead, it is clear we need a new hospital building.

She offered a couple of examples. Modern air exchange systems, necessary to control infection, would require ducting between floors.

“Our ceilings aren’t high enough to allow for that,” said Stansfield.

She noted, too, that most rooms in the existing building lack a bathroom—that patients must go out into the common area to use these facilities. There is neither room in the existing rooms, nor in the narrow hallways to add bathrooms.

“It would have to be gutted,” said Stansfield. “You know how hard it is to live in a house when it is being renovated, it is much worse in a hospital where we are dealing with vulnerable people.”

Dr. Christie says Picton has lost the opportunity to gain new beds because the physical plant is inadequate. She says a new building offers the potential to attract a wider range of care and build in flexibility into the space.

“This is the only way to go,” said Christie.