New Westminster MLA Dawn Black is disappointed with the lack of progress on plans for expanding Royal Columbian Hospital.
Last May, Black raised questions in the B.C. legislature about issues including the lack of action on expanding Royal Columbian Hospital, its standard of cleanliness and seismic upgrading.
At the time, she noted that a concept plan for expansion of Royal Columbian Hospital had been submitted to government nearly a year earlier.
Before the spring sitting of the legislature wrapped up, Black reiterated those concerns and questioned whether there has been any progress on plans to redevelop and expand Royal Columbian Hospital.
"After two years, there's been no movement to approve the concept plan and to move to a business case which the (health) minister acknowledges is what will finally move the project ahead," she said. "I was hoping our community would have some progress to celebrate during this 150th anniversary year of RCH, but sadly the government's inaction on this badly-needed project continues."
Black said she had hoped the province would move forward with the business case for the project, which is required for the expansion to proceed.
"In the meantime, things at RCH haven't gotten better," she said. "We have had a C difficile outbreak. We have terrible overflow at Emerg. We had M C the Tim Hortons incident. We routinely have hallway medicine."
While there's no good news about Royal Columbian expansion at this time, Black said she'll continue to press the government to move forward on the business plan.
Meanwhile, Black fears overcrowding at Royal Columbian Hospital emergency is being aggravated by the closure of 75 geriatric beds at Valleyview on the Riverveiw site. She said Valleyview was closed down in late 2011 but no new spaces were created to accommodate those people, so they've been absorbed into existing beds.
