St. Paul's Hospital will benefit from $17.2 million to replace aging electrical infrastructure and elevators, providing stability and consistent care for patients, announced Health Minister Michael de Jong, as he visited the facility.

Following a temporary outage in February, the Province announced $1 million to go toward short-term remediation and development of a business case for permanently upgrading the electrical system. This upgrade represents an additional $12.5 million investment. Items slated for replacement include generators, transformers, automatic transfer switches, switchgears and other critical electrical components.

The hospital will also receive $4.7 million to upgrade its elevator system. Due to the age of the buildings, the elevator system is between 20 and 40 years old, and has had issues with slow and out-of-order elevators in the past. This can cause disruptions for patients, staff and visitors to the hospital.

Certain portions of St. Paul's Hospital are 100 years old, as St. Paul's has been serving the patients and families of Vancouver since 1894. It is home to world-class clinics, such as the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, run by Dr. Julio Montaner, the innovative Distal Extremities Surgical Clinic, and the world-renowned Heart Centre, a complete cardiac care program.

Minister de Jong saw these clinics today, as well as the electrical areas that will be replaced. He met with staff and heard about the great work being done to benefit British Columbians at the hospital every day.

Providence Health Care and Vancouver Coastal Health have submitted a concept plan for the renewal of the hospital, which is currently being reviewed by the ministry.

Since 2001, the Province has invested $7 billion in health-care capital projects, and will invest a further $2 billion over the next three years, generating approximately 12,800 direct construction related jobs.

Quotes:

Dianne Doyle, president and CEO of Providence Health Care -

"The elevator and electrical upgrades are a crucial step in ensuring continued excellence and innovation in care delivery, and are foundational to Providence's planning for the hospital's redevelopment."

Quick Facts:

St. Paul's Hospital experienced a power outage and had to revert to back-up power in some areas of the hospital in February. However, because of contingency plans, patient care was not affected.

Most of the elevators in St. Paul's are over 30 years old.

Since 2001, the Province and its funding partners have invested nearly $60 million in renovating and upgrading St. Paul's Hospital, including:

• $9 million on cardiac services, ambulatory redesign and ambulatory care clinic.
• $4.6 million for site consolidation and hemodialysis machines.
• $2.1 million for redesign of the surgical procedure rooms and outpatient department.

The Distal Extremities Surgical Clinic at St Paul's Hospital has reduced wait times, increased surgeries and improved recovery times for patients in need of foot, ankle, hand or wrist surgery.

Media Contacts:

Ryan Jabs
Media Relations Manager
Ministry of Health
250 952-1887 (media line)

Justin Karasick
Director, Communications and Public Affairs
Providence Health Care
604 806-8460 (office)
604 992-2503 (cell)