N.S. unveils plan for trouble-plagued Victoria General Hospital

The parking lot at the Victoria General hospital in Halifax on Monday, Nov. 28, 2011. (Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

HALIFAX -- After more than a decade of public pressure over deplorable conditions that include leaky pipes, vermin and undrinkable water, the Nova Scotia government says it will demolish two buildings at Atlantic Canada's largest research hospital.

Under a plan announced Thursday, health services will move from two buildings at the aging Victoria General Hospital in Halifax beginning later this year. The Centennial and Victoria buildings will be taken out of service beginning in 2020 and demolished beginning in 2022.

The Victoria General has been plagued by heating issues, rodents, bedbugs and floods that have cancelled hundreds of surgeries. The water pipes are fouled by Legionnaire's disease and there are regular elevator failures and a lack of air-conditioning.

The situation has prompted numerous patient complaints over the years and at least one nurse has described the conditions as "like working in a Third World country."

Premier Stephen McNeil promised Thursday the entire project would be on budget and on time, but he wouldn't say how much it would cost.

"It would be inappropriate for me to tell you that now," said McNeil. "When we put the design work out, we'll make sure that (cost) will be part of that and then we will look at financing models to make sure that this facility is paid for and in place."

McNeil said he sees the redevelopment as an opportunity for the province to change its health care delivery model.

"This is not about the last 50 years, it's about the next 50 and beyond."

Janet Knox, CEO of the Nova Scotia Health Authority, said officials don't want to simply replicate the buildings being replaced.

"So the work that we are in the midst of involves a number of different locations, some small changes, some major renovations, some new construction," said Knox.

She said the redevelopment plan is a complex one involving most of the facilities at the two major sites that comprise the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.

The most complex and specialized services, such as organ transplants, will move from the Victoria General to the nearby Halifax Infirmary site, where designs are underway to add and reconfigure inpatient beds, operating rooms and intensive care units.

A new specialized outpatient building will be built near or connected to the Halifax Infirmary and a community outpatient centre will be built at a site to be determined on the outskirts of Halifax for services that don't need to be delivered in a hospital.

Officials said there is a need to construct the second building outside of the downtown core because 40 per cent of the people who use the hospital live outside Halifax.

The Nova Scotia Cancer Centre at the Victoria General site will be expanded and renovations costing between $132 million and $138 million will continue at the Dartmouth General Hospital, creating four additional operating rooms and 48 beds.

Five palliative care beds from the Victoria General will be moved to a planned 10-bed residential hospice in Halifax and it's estimated up to 800 surgeries per year could be performed by reopening a second operating room at the Hants Community Hospital in Windsor, N.S.

In addition, talks are underway to see if more minor surgeries can be accommodated by the privately-operated clinic Scotia Surgery, where doctors employed by the public system perform orthopedic surgeries three days a week.

Officials said the overall project timeline is between five and seven years.

McNeil said the project isn't contingent on federal funding and that planners would consider whether public-private partnership funding could be used for certain building aspects of the overall plan.

"We've not made a commitment to that, but it will certainly be part of how we look at it," he said.

In its budget released earlier this week the government said it would spend $3.7 million on design plans for the replacement work.

The QEII complex is the leading research, teaching and surgical care centre in Atlantic Canada and sees almost one million patient visits a year, including nearly 23,000 from New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Newfoundland and Labrador.

The hospital is also home to 1,200 active research projects.

The Victoria Building was built in 1948 while the Centennial was constructed in 1967.