Sherwood Park, Strathcona County reeling after community hospital cut

The images on a sign, up outside of the construction site where the Sherwood Park Hospital was being built, bears the logo for Capital Health and the old Alberta logo.

A day after the provincial government tabled their budget, officials and residents in Sherwood Park are reacting to news that their long-anticipated hospital was not in the province’s plan for the next three years.

Construction had been underway on and off, on the Sherwood Park Community Hospital for several years – it’s been in the works since 2005.

Now, what was supposed to be a multi-phase, fully functioning hospital with an emergency room, surgical suites and other services will not come to fruition the way residents thought.

“We don’t like their decision,” Sherwood Park Mayor Linda Osinchuk said. “We’re disappointed in their decision.”

The Health Minister said the decision to drop further funding for the facility was a tough one.

“It’s a case of trying to make some difficult decisions,” Minister Fred Horne said. “This was one of them.”

Construction will not continue past the first phase, and the facility will become an urgent care centre, as funding for the next phase of construction was not included in Budget 2013.

“We understand there’s a fiscal crunch, but we also expect some respect,” Osinchuk said.

The cut in the budget comes after the project encountered its share of stops and starts in recent years – it was originally supposed to be completed in 2009, but was put on hold, the next year, it started again.

The province said Thursday the project was not a priority.

“The majority of people in Sherwood Park and Strathcona County live within 30 minutes of any hospital in Edmonton,” Horne said Friday.

Mayor Osinchuk is writing a letter to the premier, asking for an explanation.

The project is now expected to open in about a year – it was originally expected to cost $160 million, but is now expected to cost about $130 million.

With files from Bill Fortier