Chelsey St. Pierre – The Suburban LJI Reporter
A prefabricated modular ER is being erected at the Lakeshore General Hospital (LGH). The Emergency Room will operate within the temporary structure by next spring as a three-year construction project of a new three-storey building is scheduled to begin in 2025.
The current ER has 31 stretchers. The temporary facility will have six additional stretchers.
According to Assistant-Director General at the regional health authority (CIUSSS-ODIM) Jean-Francois Miron, the permanent structure is expected to be announced officially next year by Quebec’s health ministry.
“This is a real step prior to construction, that’s the step just before we go to tender for a novel plan out to start building. I am very hopeful that we will have our new ER and the government has been very supportive for the modular system that they just invested in. Plans for the new (permanent) ER are in the works as we speak,” Miron told The Suburban.
Quebec has committed to investing $14.5 million towards the design phase, a model of functionality and analysis of tenders presented to construct the new ER.
Plans released to date for the permanent ER depict an 8,300 square-meter building housing 38 emergency-ward stretchers in cubicles on the ground floor along with a number of examination rooms, pre-triage and triage zones. On the upper floor, twelve short-term hospitalization beds will be located in a unit reserved for physical health patients and six beds reserved for short-term mental health care will be located in a separate unit. Medical imaging rooms as well as a rapid assessment zone with 10 seats will also be located on an upper floor. A mechanical equipment room will be set up in the basement.
Community activist Sheila Laursen — former board member at the West Island health and social services center — told The Suburban that she is hopeful about the proposed project but is also skeptical. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.
“I was on the board for many years and the population has grown well beyond what it was in 1965. Along the way, many promises of expansion were made, especially around election time and in the end, nothing more than some cosmetic updates were done,”
Laursen noted that while the ER was getting more and more flooded over the years, simultaneously the shortage of family physicians grew, forcing patients to use clinics and ERs, only adding to the issue.
“This is another ‘plan’ and promise. A temporary building is coming up while they say the permanent ER work will start in 2025. Funny how it gets dangled on election years. Politics take place but reality takes place. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Now facing Bill 15, we are taking all the bad things and making it worse. CIUSSS is a monolith of healthcare structure management and it is already difficult to respond on a local level. Under Bill 15, hospital management will not be local. Quebec needs to guarantee the funding and allow for adaptability on a local level, rather than patchwork. Health services are only as good as you can get access and in a timely way.”
When asked how this plan is different than other promises made in the past by the provincial government, Miron said:
“We are building the temporary ER and there will be a real announcement by the Ministry. It is not something we can mention because we have to give context around the modular system that we’re putting together, but that will be announced probably in a year from now. The module system is important because it’s a first step in making the emergency a better environment for the community as well as for staff.”
When questioned about plans for adequate staffing with the temporary expansion of the modular, and the eventual ER, Miron responded:
“We are starting to have conversations on how that will be addressed. It’s hard to have full staff, like any emergency room in any hospital in Quebec. What we are creating now with the modular is a better environment, and hopefully that will help us with staffing as well.”