The renovations have started at St. Joseph’s Hospital to accommodate a new addictions treatment centre, and it’s not the only project currently underway at the hospital.
The renovations started last week to accommodate the 20-bed facility, which will hopefully be open in September. The area had been used for an addictions treatment centre until 1996, when it was closed by the provincial government of the day.
The area where the new addictions centre will be located had recently been housing primary health services offices for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, such as mental health, public health, home care and ambulatory care. Those services are being relocated to the Estevan Area Home Care building.
A renovation of the home care building is also currently underway.
The provincial government announced in March that it was re-establishing the addictions treatment centre in Estevan. The 20-bed inpatient treatment centre will specialize in crystal meth, with 15 of the beds dedicated to meth, and the remaining five beds for other drug addictions.
The treatment of addictions was a fixture at St. Joseph’s for many years, first at the hospital’s old location on First Street and then at its present home on Nicholson Road.
They had initially hoped for a July opening, but now September is the projected opening date.
“This is something that we have been working towards for a number of years. It’s been on our radar to try to get the addictions centre open again. But truly in the last 12 months, our management team has put in an enormous amount of work into putting the plans together to give the government something they could buy into, and something where we could give them the confidence we could deliver a program that is going to meet their needs.”
Hoffort said to have 12 months of hard work pay off with the start of construction is something they’re proud of.
The clinical manager has already been hired. The hospital has formed a partnership with Cedars at Cobble Hill, which is a renowned treatment centre out of B.C. that has been in this line of work for many years.
About 15 employees will be added to the staff through the treatment program.
Hoffort noted that all of the work for both renovations will be completed by local contractors.
“It was something we really worked hard at achieving was to keep that local. Our hospital is 100 per cent supported by our community, and it was important for us for these projects to keep them local.”
Next week's edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
