NANAIMO — A modernized and enhanced new department to serve sick and ill patients at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) will officially open next week.
The new High Acuity Unit (HAU) will start accepting patients on Thursday, Aug. 28, providing care for those with serious health problems, complementing the already-revamped Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Each of the 12 private patient rooms offers dialysis capability, monitoring equipment, a nurses’ station, medication and utility rooms and more.
They also include designated family rooms with reclining chairs and sleeping areas.
The HAU is located south of the Emergency Department and attached to the ICU, replacing the temporary eight-bed HAU set up in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This adds four new high acuity beds to the hospital, bringing the total number of high acuity and intensive care beds at NRGH to 24.
(L-R) MLA for Ladysmith-Oceanside Stephanie Higginson, Nanaimo-Gabriola Island MLA Sheila Malcolmson representing infrastructure minister Bowinn Ma, and Nanaimo-Lantzville MLA George Anderson at NRGH on Friday, Aug. 22. (Ian Holmes/NanaimoNewsNOW)The new 12-bed HAU on the hospital’s ground floor works in unison with the 12-bed ICU directly above, which opened in 2023.
The unit is designed to accommodate serious cases which require more care than a regular hospital ward can provide, but not critical enough to be admitted into the ICU.
Project capital costs reached $18.5 million, and this unit is the final phase of a $60.1 million initiative to expand critical services at NRGH, with $41.6 million provided for the ICU.
Provincial government funding for the HAU was secured in March 2023, along with funds from the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District and the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation.
Opening the HAU is one year behind Island Health’s original projected opening date of the summer, 2024.
With the project complete, the next capital project to materialize at NRGH is the BC cancer centre.
Island Health expects formal construction to get underway on the facility this fall near the hospital’s main entrance off Dufferin Cres.
The health authority expects construction of the regional cancer centre will be complete in 2028.
Additional surface and parkade infrastructure is included in the Nanaimo cancer centre project.
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