$15M Abbotsford Regional Hospital ER expansion announced pic.twitter.com/663gviWX8O
â Tyler Olsen (@ty_olsen) April 3, 2017
Abbotsford Regional Hospital’s emergency room will be getting a $15 million expansion, Abbotsford-West MLA Mike de Jong announced Monday.
The expansion will include 7,200 square feet of additional floor space that doctors and physicians will hope ease persistent congestion issues at the facility.
It will also include a dedicated mental health and substance use area, relocation of ambulance bays, creation of a nursing substation, and dedicated stretcher bays.
Since construction in 2008, the number of emergency patients has increased 60 per cent, to 80,000 annually.
Fraser Health said the expanded emergency department “will be staffed to accommodate the extra size.” Staffing levels fluctuate, health authority spokesperson said, based on patient volumes.
Monday’s announcement was six months in the making, de Jong said. It comes less than a month after Health Minister Terry Lake told the News there were plans for an ARH emergency department expansion; a spokesperson later said that Lake was provided inaccurate information and that there were “no specific plans to expand the emergency department at Abbotsford Hospital.”
Watch abbynews.com for more.
