Province struggles with $1B repair bill for health centres

EDMONTON - The Alberta government is facing a bill of close to $1 billion to repair its aging health facilities across the province, prompting opposition critics to wonder how the government will ever catch up on all the needed work.

Health Minister Fred Horne acknowledged Tuesday the deferred maintenance tab is daunting, especially since the province is committing only $70 million each year to address the list of repairs.

He said the government is responsible for looking after 99 hospitals, the most of any province on a per-capita basis. Many of those facilities were built in the 1970s and early 80s in the Peter Lougheed era, and are now suffering serious breakdowns everything from electrical and drainage issues to faulty furnaces and broken elevators.

A lot of them are coming to an age where they require major investments and we are making those investments where we can, Horne said. The demand for money for repairs and maintenance always exceeds the supply. Is there more we can be doing? We are limited by resources we have, just like every health care system is.

Horne said he didnt know how much of that $1-billion tab is for critical projects that must be done quickly to keep the facilities running safely.

Regardless, opposition parties said the government needs to re-examine its spending priorities, since failing infrastructure has the potential to hurt patients, put staff under excessive pressure and increase the operational costs of hospitals.

They are never, ever, going to catch up at this rate, Wildrose health critic Heather Forsyth said. Its time this government started being honest with Albertans about the condition of some of their hospitals in this province that need to be fixed.

Forsyth said her party has Alberta Health Services documents that show Alberta has at least a dozen hospitals in poor condition.

Among them is the 45-year-old Misericordia Hospital operated by Covenant Health, which last year asked Horne for $33.5 million just to address critical issues, according to documents obtained by the provincial NDP.

I am writing to you to express the boards grave concern with the state of the Misericordia, Covenants chairman John Brennan wrote to Horne in an April 26, 2013, letter. (The hospital) is increasingly challenged to meet the needs of its patient population due to its deteriorating infrastructure and functional design.

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Province struggles with $1B repair bill for health centres