A trip to Eagle Ridge Hospital will be getting a little more painless with the addition of new beds designed to get patients from emergency to admitted faster.
The Port Moody hospital will grow by 22 new permanent acute care beds, while 12 existing sub-acute beds will be upgraded to form a new 34-bed acute general medicine unit. The changes should decrease the amount of time patients wait to be admitted from emergency, reduce the number of patients being cared for in non-clinical areas, like hallways, and provide better patient care.
"We're so excited," said Valerie Spurrell, ERH executive director. "This doubles the number of acute medical beds we have."
The ongoing master site planning process for Eagle Ridge has shown there was a need for additional acute care capacity, Spurrell added, making the new changes a step in the right direction.
In addition, patients recovering from strokes or brain, spinal and other serious injuries will be cared for in an expanded regional rehab unit.
Nine beds will move from Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) while an existing nine Patient Assessment and Transition to Home (PATH) beds at Eagle Ridge will be converted to rehab beds, creating an 18-bed regional rehab unit.
Thirty PATH beds will remain at Eagle Ridge, which is enough to serve both the Tri-Cities and New Westminster.
The changes are also expected to create new job opportunities at Eagle Ridge for nurses, doctors and support workers, said Spurrell, with postings going online this week and plans for an open house next week to attract interested local applicants.
Fraser Health notes the changes at Eagle Ridge will create centralized, focused units that should speed recovery time. Previously, the 12 sub-acute beds at Eagle Ridge were mixed with PATH beds, while the rehab beds were split between sites.
Also changing at the PoMo hospital will be the closure of the 25-bed Transitional Care Unit (TCU).
TCUs were a temporary measure for patients who no longer need to be in hospital but were waiting for a residential care bed.
Those patients will now be transferred to residential care facilities directly from PATH or medicine units.
Fraser Health spokesperson Roy Thorpe-Dorward said an expression of interest for those additional local residential care beds will be issued shortly.
Overall, the expansion at Eagle Ridge will allow the hospital to "play a more important role in the regional health care system," Thorpe-Dorward said.
The new acute care beds and regional rehab beds will be phased in as renovations are completed and new staff members are hired, starting at the end of this month. The additional capacity is expected to be ready in November.
