Penticton Regional Hospital Patient Care Tower

under construction

Opportunity Penticton Regional Hospital is one of six referral centres within Interior Health’s network of hospitals. The hospital provides secondary and specialized acute care for patients living in the South Okanagan referral area. The current hospital was constructed in 1951 with additions made in 1969 to accommodate Laboratory, Radiology and Operating Suites; and between 1989 and 1991 to provide space for Ambulatory Care Critical Care and Psychiatry. These aging facilities have been impeding the delivery of safe, timely, and effective patient care which was further amplified by patient volume, pushing the hospitalwas over-capacity and exacerbated infection control issues multi-bed wards. In order to significantly improve access to health care in the South Okanagan it was necessary to construct a new patient care centre. The project is being jointly funded by the Okanagan-Similkameen Regional Hospital District ($117 million), the South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation ($20 million), Interior Health ($14.4 million) and the British Columbia provincial government ($161.1 million). Innovations The project will be undertaken in two phases, allowing clinical services to move into the new tower so that renovations can be done on existing buildings, lessening the impact of the project on staff and patient care. The 30-year concession term for the facility links payment to availability and performance, incentivizing the private partner to complete the structure on-time and to meet or exceed performance measures set out in the Project Agreement. Results The new patient care tower built during Phase 1 of the project  will be a six-storey, 26,700 square-meter building including space for: A new ambulatory care centre featuring services such as cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, maternal/child clinics (services for pre- and post-pregnancy, newborns and children), respiratory, pre-surgical screening, satellite medical imaging and a laboratory for specimen collection; A surgical suite including five operating rooms and six minor procedure rooms; 84 medical/surgical inpatient beds in single patient rooms each with their own washroom; A new medical device reprocessing department; Space for the UBC Faculty of Medicine program; and A rooftop helipad. An adjacent tower houses a 480 stall parkade. Renovations to existing areas of the hospital undertaken during Phase 2 resulted in the expansion of the emergency department into a space nearly four times the size of the current department. The new patient care tower is efficiently-designed to be patient-centred and elder friendly. The design also features wood finishes aligning with B.C.’s Wood First Act. The new patient care tower has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.

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