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Temporary OR at Royal Inland to cost $1.4 million

Regional hospital district directors have raised questions about cost estimates and whether there will be physicians to staff it

Cam Fortems – Kamloops This Week

Regional hospital district directors have agreed to fund $1.4 million toward an operating theatre at Royal Inland Hospital, but have raised questions about Interior Health Authority cost estimates and whether there will be physicians to staff it.

The board of the Thompson Regional Hospital District met on Friday, March 28, to consider a budget request from the IHA.

Local taxpayers pay 40 per cent of health capital costs.

Cache Creek Mayor John Ranta said he is wary of a ninth surgical room intended to be temporary until completion of the Columbia Street surgical tower.

“When I say interim car, it’s a piece of junk I intend to throw away,” Ranta said.

Questions also arose about staffing, something the IHA’s executive director of acute services, Heather Cook, acknowledged is a problem. She said the new operating area will help recruitment.

“You can’t attract surgeons and anaesthetists without operating time,” she said.

In an interview, Cook said existing surgical staff here have told the IHA they want more operating time.

The operating theatre is expected to be complete in 2016. IHA forecasts it will allow about 700 more surgeries per year.

“The addition of an OR suite will definitely help us attract,” Cook said, adding she does not  know the current staffing today with surgical staff.

Kamloops Mayor Peter Milobar, who chairs the hospital district, said he expects the interim operating theatre will be used for 10 years “at a minimum.”

The best-case scenario will see a new $400-million clinical building begin construction in 2017, with four to five years construction time, Milobar predicted.

Other capital request approved include a code-white system for emergencies at the South Hills psychiatric centre and a gamma camera at RIH.

Laundry services will also be relocated at Overlander Extended Care — at a 40 per cent budget increase.

“I don’t think it’s fair for you to come back to the board and say it’s a 50 per cent increase,” director Ken Gillis told IHA officials, calling the earlier budget “a wild guess.”

Regional and city taxpayers are in the last year of a three-year plan to raise a downpayment toward the new surgical tower at RIH.

 

The budget will see the average taxpayer kick in another $21 this year, a doubling over three years to $126 for a typical household.