The paper work is almost finished and Brockville General Hospital is asking local governments to help fund an expansion.
BGH CEO Nick Vlacholias is excited about the infrastructure project and all the good it can do for health care in the area. According to Vlacholias there will be around 175,000 square feet of new space when the project is finished and this will allow them to move all of the services at the Garden Street site to the Charles Street location.
The undertaking will cost over $150 million dollars and so far the costs have been covered by a Planning Grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health. To raise some of the difference Vlacholias and team have been making presentations in ridings that use the hospital’s services, asking for community support in funding the project.
According to Vlacholias they are looking at a local shared component of 18.5 million dollars. Ten million of that will be coming from the Brockville and District Hospital Foundation and they intent to collect the remaining 8.5 million from local governments based on usage. Vlacholias says they worked out a market share of hospital usage by comparing postal codes to patients who used services like emergency visits, day surgery cases and inpatient admissions.
Under this formula Brockville General Hospital is asking the Town of Prescott to donate around 950 thousand dollars to the expansion. According to Vlacholias if they cannot raise the money they need through the municipalities they’ll be forced to run a more rigorous community fundraising campaign but construction will continue.
Vlacholias notes that they are in the final stages of signing the documents with the contractor and they expect construction to begin in early March. Construction isn’t expected to be finished until Fall of 2020.