By Cheryl Jahn

Surgical Tower coming, says Minister

Jan 4, 2024 | 2:03 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The operating rooms at University Hospital of Northern B.C. were built in the 1980s and are far too inadequate to meet modern technological needs. Nor can a cancer patient get something as simple as a stent at this hospital.

Back in 2017, during a trip to the wildfire evacuation sites, newly-minted Health Minister Adrian Dix was asked about the needs of this hospital.

“Well, after some time, you know,” he noted at the time. In 2008, I think I had visited operating rooms that were in 2008, were seen as too small and insufficiently modern for both the demands and the ambitions of some of the hospitals here. Right? And that was 2008. I understand some initial plans is being made and obviously we’ll be supporting Northern Health as they go through that.”

Flash forward more than six years later and two major projects show up in Northern Health’s capital projects list. The first was nearly $2 million for cardiac care unit upgrades at University Hospital in Northern BC.

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“Our capital stock in health care, though, there’s something called the Facility Condition Index and for all those people who think I use too many statistics, here’s another one, which is point five to province-wide and all our facilities and that is poor,” says Dix. “That means poor and all the facilities across BC. So we’re constantly making small capital improvements and that would be one of them.”

The next line item on the capital list is of more significance. It reads: “UHNBC New Acute Tower Works.” But as with any major project, Minister Dix says, early works need to be done.

“That’s true in Prince George. When you’re taking down buildings and putting up buildings, you have to prepare for that. And that’s what early works is about. And so you say, ‘Well, you haven’t announced the full project at a business plan stage, only a concept plan stage,’ Well, this is preparation. We need to do this anyway. And I said, let’s go, and let’s do the first stages. And I can tell you, people at Prince George are enthusiastic about it. Let’s go. And so that’s what we’re doing there. That’s what those early works are for. And, you know, it’s the order of things you have to do when you’ve got an existing site and you have to use the space set aside for parking or other things that you need to deal with that issue first. And that’s going to be how the whole hospital project gets built. So the early works have been approved. They’re proceeding. And that’s the tower. Yeah.”

Work on the initial step is expected to begin in 2024 and be completed the following year.