Expansion of Boundary Trails Health Centre continues to progress, and the project officially got a major financial boost last week.
The Boundary Trails Health Centre Foundation presented the first $2.5 million payment of its overall $10 million commitment to support the expansion.
“We were really excited, and it was our pleasure to finally put some of the community donations to work,” said foundation chairperson Ben Friesen.
“We’ve been fundraising and working on this $10 million that we committed to this project,” he said. “We did a lot of fundraisers … the community was 100 per cent behind it.”
There has been a lot of personal one-on-one campaigning and many presentations, he noted, with major support from all of the municipalities in the region.
“We got fantastic support from all of the ones that we visited … and then of course even a lot of local contributors, businesses, companies as well as personal, a lot of personal investments.
“From the start of this project, from our fundraising perspective, the community has been one hundred per cent in support of this project.”
Friesen reflected that the thought of this campaign goes back many years, and there has been a lot of meetings and a lot of hard work to get to this point.
“It just feels fantastic. You’ve worked for it. You know the support is there. You know the cause is good,” he said. “We all want to do this for the betterment of our community,.
“We always do fundraising. Our foundation operates a hundred per cent on donations, and we do a lot of other stuff. This is a special capital campaign,” Friesen noted. “We work on the palliative care, the spiritual care as well as all the equipment needs … the foundation will continue to grow. We also feel that there’s a lot of other opportunities coming in.
“We’re very pleased to say that we are partners with Southern Health on this project,” added Friesen.
Southern Health-Santé Sud CEO Jane Curtis applauded the commitment to the expansion.
“We’ve been working with the foundation now for many years, and they never fail to step up to the plate when we have these types of projects. It’s just really incredible the partnership that we have with them and the work that they do in the community.
“It feels great … this has been years and years of planning,” added Curtis. “The community is just incredible in this area. Their generosity, their community-mindedness. It’s just incredible. I can’t say enough about the people who live in this area and how much they care about their community.”
The $100 million expansion of Boundary Trails Health Centre is being completed in phases and includes the addition of 24 acute care inpatient beds, an expanded emergency department, a new state-of-the-art operating room, expansion of the cancer care unit, dedicated space for palliative care services, and a Level 2 nursery designed to provide services to premature newborns with complex feeding needs.
The new community services building will enable existing community services to be relocated from the existing hospital space. Services in the new building will include public health, midwifery, home care services, children and youth rehabilitation services and a centre for hope healing garden and healing courtyard.
Then, once all of that has been accomplished, work will begin on renovation of the existing hospital space.
