Bluewater Health is requesting a $10 million dollar grant from the County of Lambton.
President and CEO Mike Lapaine told Lambton County Council Wednesday the investment, paid over ten years, would significantly impact three projects, including redevelopment of Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia.
He said while operating costs are funded by a large grant from the ministry of health, capital investments are a different process.
"Capital infrastructure is 90 per cent funded by the ministry and ten per cent by the community," said Lapaine. "However, the community's also expected to furnish and provide all of the equipment in the building, which can be up to another 30 per cent."
Lapaine said the county was very generous when the Sarnia site was redeveloped over a decade ago.
"That was a massive, over $300 million dollar project, and we needed about $45 million dollars from the community. At the time the county very generously provided $15 million of that over a ten year period."
The first phase of CEE redevelopment focuses on the emergency department.
"That emergency department was constructed over 40 years ago and at the time they saw about 7,000 emergency department visits. Last year we did over 21,000 visits. It is grossly undersized, it is not state-of-the-art, furthermore the acute care rooms are not up to standard in terms of accessibility, washrooms etc."
Bluewater Health is also planning to redevelop and expand Sarnia-Lambton's Cancer Care Program.
"We have a great oncology space and when it was put in it was based on the volumes we were seeing in the ten years prior to that," said Lapaine. "Sadly we see a higher incidence of cancer in the community and there's a lot of pressure on our cancer program and the second floor where we house our chemo unit is grossly undersized. The waiting room doesn't accommodate the number of people there."
Lapine said recruiting a second oncologist has cause a further increase in volumes in the cancer clinics.
County funding would also be used to develop the residential withdrawal management program.
A small delegation will sit down with Ontario's health minister March 12 to discuss provincial funding to build Sarnia-Lambton's long planned withdrawal management centre.
Bluewater Health's grant request will be considered during county council budget deliberations March 4 in Wyoming.
