Hospital officials from Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) have updated city councillors about ongoing plans to build a secondary health-care facility, or “southern campus,” likely somewhere in Innisfil or south-end Barrie in the coming years.
Hospital president and CEO Janice Skot and Michael O’Keefe, chairman of the RVH board of directors, made a presentation to council at city hall, Monday night.
The idea for a new hospital campus south of the city has been on the radar since the early 2000s. It would help not only address medical needs in ever-growing south-end Barrie, but also Innisfil and Bradford West Gwillimbury as more people continue to come north for health-care services.
The population in Barrie, Bradford and Innisfil is expected to increase by more than 400,000 by 2041 and with that comes more strain on health-care services.
The existing hospital on Georgian Drive in north-end Barrie has recently been operating with an occupancy rate of more than 120 per cent. As the population continues to grow around Barrie, a new facility would alleviate some of that pressure.
The 40-acre site on Georgian Drive has also been built out and there is no room for expansion there. It was also noted in the presentation that the 2012 expansion there did not address all of the urgent needs, meaning another solution is necessary.
The southern campus would be a “hospital of the future,” incorporating advancements such as artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, virtual health care (where patients may not even need to visit a hospital), robotic surgery, microrobotics and genome mapping.
“Nothing will be taken away (from the current location)... but it will be more a matter of complementing it,” Skot said.
However, a southern campus is still years if not decades away, Skot said.
“We need to get planning underway,” she said. “It takes a long time to get a hospital built on a greenfield site.”
The first step is site selection, followed by a master program including which services it will provide, a master plan with facility details, cost estimates, a final plan and pre-capital submissions.
In order to provide residents with a 15-minute drive to their nearest hospital, RVH officials are looking at a location east of Highway 400 and south of Kempenfelt Bay. Such as location would also provide a health-care facility for new residents once 5,700 acres of former Innisfil land, which was annexed by Barrie a few years ago, begins to be fully developed.
RVH also has a 50-acre site, located at Yonge Street and the Sixth Line, which was donated to the hospital.
“It might be the best site or there might be another site that’s better,” Skot said.
Some of the land requirements include that it be on developable, aesthetic land with potential for future expansion. It should be located on a major arterial road (either existing or in the future), with easy access, visibility and accessible to current or planned public transit. It should also be in proximity to other transportation modes, such as bike trails.
The new facility would be constructed gradually -- Skot used the analogy of building with LEGO -- with an eye on becoming a fully fledged hospital with all the usual services.
The graduated model would include the Innisfil Rizzardo Health & Wellness Centre (5,000 square feet leased space for RVH outpatient services) over the next 10 years; an ambulatory health centre in 10 years; inpatient units which are not dependent on a full emergency department in 10 to 20 years; and a full acute-care hospital (ER, critical care, operating rooms, labs, pharmacy, imaging) in 20-plus years.
