Health and Community Services
April 30, 2013
Opposition Wants Status Quo, the Provincial Government Wants Better
The new Corner Brook hospital will provide residents of the western region
with a state-of-the-art facility that incorporates best practices, enhanced
models of care and services focused on the needs and demands of the
population.
“The new hospital model will improve operational efficiencies and implement
best practices which will ensure that we are providing the appropriate
levels of care to patients, at the right time and in the right place,” said
the Honourable Susan Sullivan, Minister of Health and Community Services.
“The Member from the Bay of Islands has gone out of his way to misconstrue
the facts, but that doesn’t change what we are doing. The new hospital
complex will have more beds, it will be better suited to meet the needs of
individuals who require long-term care and it will have a greater capacity
to provide more surgeries than is possible today.”
Over the next three years the Provincial Government will invest $227 million
to begin construction of the new 260-bed regional acute care health facility
in Corner Brook. Budget 2013 investments will allow this significant project
to move into the design phase with construction expected to commence on the
site in 2015.
“I have a hard time understanding why the Opposition Member is so against
building this hospital,” said Minister Sullivan. “He has asked us repeatedly
to build a facility that is responsive to the needs of the people on the
west coast and that is just what we are doing. Suddenly, this is not what he
wants. He wants to remain status quo, but our government is not about that,
we are about looking to the future, we want more and better for Newfoundland
and Labrador, and that is exactly what we will deliver.”
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Media contact:
Scott Barfoot
Director of Communications
Department of Health and Community Services
709-729-1377, 690-6290
scottbarfoot@gov.nl.ca
2013 04 30
5:25 p.m.