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| Original News Release |
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| Original News Release |
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Chronology:
1981 The redevelopment of Vancouver General Hospital begins with the completion of the emergency room, operating rooms, part of the intensive care unit, and academic offices, in Laurel Street Pavilion. Cost: $22 million. The goal of the redevelopment is to house diagnostic, educational, clinical, nursing and patient services in an integrated complex, to replace the Heather Pavilion and other buildings.
1988 Construction of the Laurel Street Pavilion tower begins, starting with the shell.
1991 Construction of the tower shell is complete, but the facility remains vacant while work begins on mechanical services and then the Pavilion podium, or base.
1996 The podium is completed and space designated on the ground, first and second floors for operating rooms, the BC Professional Firefighters’ burn and plastic surgery unit and laboratory, cardiology, renal and rehabilitation services. Cost for the tower shell and podium: $131.7 million.
1999 The trauma special care unit and radiology project are completed. Cost: $37.9 million.
The province announces a total of $156.4 million in additional funding to complete the VGH redevelopment project, including the tower, as well as renovation of Centennial Pavilion. B.C. entrepreneur and philanthropist Jim Pattison also donates a gift of $20 million over seven years to help establish a centre of excellence in prostate research. The Laurel Street Pavilion is renamed the Jim Pattison Pavilion in his honour.
2002 Premier Gordon Campbell announces a new, $90-million academic ambulatory care centre will be established at VGH, adjacent to the Jim Pattison Pavilion, and reiterates the government’s commitment to complete the inpatient tower.
2003 Inpatient tower opens, with 12 new floors of patient services and 459 beds to replace portions of the Centennial Pavilion. Cost of completing inpatient tower: $66.5 million.
2004 Estimated completion of Jim Pattison Pavilion basement, to create room for non-medical services, as well as a power plant replacement. Approximate projected cost: $40 million. Total cost of Jim Pattison Pavilion, not including other VGH renovations: $298 million.
Facts and Figures:
Features of Jim Pattison Pavilion:
Patient Lifts and Employee Safety:
The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority worked with the Workers’ Compensation Board to install overhead patient lifts on all 459 beds in the Jim Pattison Pavilion. VGH invested $4.7 million for lifts and beds, with funding from the government’s $15-million commitment under the 2001 nursing strategy to help avoid workplace injuries. The WCB invested $3 million.
Benefits are expected almost immediately, with a reduction in claims costs due to injury for the WCB and a reduction in overtime costs to replace injured staff. The investment will pay for itself in nine years if injuries are cut by 50 per cent, or just over four years if the rate of reduction is 100 per cent. Long-term benefits are not only financial, but also can be seen with increased patient safety and dignity, as well as increased safety to staff, which will inevitably lead to greater recruitment of new staff and retention of current staff.
At the former Vancouver Richmond Health Board, “overexertion to patient” accounted for 52 per cent of total injuries, 61 per cent of total days lost, 61 per cent of the total cost of injury and $3 million in costs in annual WCB claims (average over a five year span, 1995-1999). Overtime to replace injured workers topped $1 million a year and WCB premiums reached an all-time high of $16.7 million in 2000.
More than 40,000 time-loss injuries to health-care workers in British Columbia were reported to the WCB between 1998 and 2002, resulting in almost two million days lost. The health-care sector accounted for 14 per cent of all time-loss claims – more than any other industry. Direct claims costs from 1999 to 2002 were $235 million.
Timeframe for Moving Patients:
Twelve floors and 459 patients will be moved over a 12-day period between May 21 and June 1, at a cost of $251,000.
The bone marrow transplant unit will take up occupancy in July. Its location was initially slated for the surgical short-stay unit, which has since been dispersed, and renovations to the 15th floor were required.
Following renovations to Centennial Pavilion, expected to take a year, the spinal unit will move back in. A highly specialized unit was built on East 9 in Centennial Pavilion, specifically to meet the needs of the spine population, when the program moved over from Shaughnessy Hospital in 1993. Also, the unit wishes to integrate in- and outpatient programs. Spine clinics will move in from Heather once upgrades to Centennial are complete, as will other clinical patient units.
Ground floor – Emergency department, psych assessment unit, radiology, cardiac care First floor – BC Professional Firefighters’ burn and plastic surgery unit, operating theatres, lab medicine, cell separator unit, ECG Second – mechanical floor Third – mechanical floor
Fourth – Acute medical Fifth - Neurology/NICU Sixth - Neurosurgery Seventh - Trauma Eighth – Vascular and general surgery Ninth - General surgery Tenth- Gynaecology/urology Eleventh – Cardiac – GI - nephrology Twelfth – Respiratory/thoracic Fourteenth – Orthopedics Fifteenth - Bone marrow transplant Sixteenth – Palliative Seventeenth – Mechanical Eighteenth – Mechanical Nineteenth – Mechanical
Patient Rooms:
Total beds 459 Total rooms 310 Total private rooms 206 Total double rooms 84 Total four-bed rooms 16 Total five-bed rooms 3* Total six-bed rooms 1* *Specialty rooms
Breakdown of rooms per floor: Two pods per floor, each pod made up of 10 private rooms, four doubles and one four-bed room, for a total of 44 beds per floor. Double rooms in trauma floors have been shown to aid healing. The palliative unit on 16th floor has 13 private rooms and two doubles.
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