South Huron's Hospital Foundation Executive Director Outlined Plans For A New Medical Centre At A Recent Council Meeting

by Bob Montgomery

South Huron Hospital Foundation Executive Director Krista McCann brought South Huron council up to date on their plans for a new Medical Centre.

McCann says the new medical centre is necessary because the current facility is too small to accommodate any new physicians and they are definitely in need of new physicians to serve both primary care, including family practice and emergency, and an in-patient unit at the hospital. “In order to keep the hospital ER staffed we need to have local physicians, and in order to have local physicians we need to be able to accommodate local physicians, and we just don't have that capacity in our existing facility anymore.”

Another wrinkle in the current situation is that the current medical centre is owned, operated and financed by the hospital. McCann says that's a rather unique arrangement. The Foundation wanted to remove that burden from the hospital so they're not responsible for increasing the size, or updating the current building, because that's not something the hospital should be focused on. So, with the hospital board's approval, the Foundation is moving ahead with a new medical centre that would also serve the needs of the hospital.

They're still in the very early stages. McCann says they've just put their steering committee. As far as cost is concerned, they have an estimated price tag of fifteen million dollars, and she says they've been told by other people who have been through the process that they should build as big as they can because in ten or fifteen years they'll find they didn't go big enough.

They'd like to get started as soon as possible and McCann says the first step is getting the land. Once that's done, they can look ahead to the actual construction. McCann says what the foundation is looking to do is provide a facility that truly serves the health and well-being of the community. One of their primary purposes is to have a significant portion of the new facility serving the family physician practice. So, they would essentially lease a large portion of the space, but they would like to provide that space as close to lease-free for the physicians and that is something that would help attract and retain physicians to Exeter. The second goal is to have space for what's called alternative hospital space. She says the hospital is currently bursting at the seams so they're looking at what services could be moved into a building, possibly next door, to free up some space within the hospital. They would also like to have other out-patient community resources available in the new building, so they're looking at what mental illness resources they could have and other services like pharmacies within the new building.

McCann says it's too early to predict time lines for construction, but if they could have a shovel in the ground by next spring they would be very happy.