Groundbreaking ceremony marks start of construction on North Shore Hospice expansion
Construction started this week on the $2 million expansion to the North Shore Hospice that will transform the facility into the first hospice of its kind in British Columbia. The project, funded through Lions Gate Hospital Foundation’s North Shore Hospice Expansion Campaign, is expected to be completed by September 2018.
Dr. Peter Edmunds, Regional Medical Director for Palliative Care, Jo-Ann Wood, chair, North Shore Hospice & Palliative Project, and Karin Olson, COO – Coastal gathered for the official ground breaking on Tuesday morning for the building of the new hub that will provide space for the palliative care team to offer quality of life and medical services for patients living at home and their families.
“With the outpatient palliative services in one place it will give us a visible face in the community and provide a palliative campus of care for people on the North Shore,” says Dr. Peter Edmunds, Regional Medical Director, Home, Community and Palliative Care. “I believe there is no other facility like this in B.C. that is purely focused on supporting all aspects of care for palliative care patients.”
The new hub will enable the team to serve more patients and connect with them earlier in their end-of-life journey. The additional services are aimed at providing a seamless transition between normal care, hospice care and end-of-life care.
Architect’s rendering of the expanded North Shore Hospice.
Hub will reduce visits to the Emergency Department
In addition to its existing 15 hospice beds, the hub will include a new Palliative Outpatient Clinic, providing patients with convenient, rapid access to the North Shore Palliative Care Physician Team. This is a much-needed alternative to waiting for an appointment at a busy family practice clinic or visiting the Emergency Department.
The Outpatient Clinic will also provide the capability for the North Shore Palliative Care physician team to extend their reach via video link to “see” patients living on the Sunshine Coast and up the Sea-to-Sky Corridor.
The hub will also feature the Every Day Counts Centre, a permanent home for the Every Day Counts Program, one of the most beneficial and transformative programs available to patients with life-limiting illness on the North Shore. Every Day Counts addresses all aspects of a patient’s quality of life that are not medical and offers one-on-one counselling, yoga, music therapy, relaxation sessions, information about navigating the health care system and more.
Parking information
Due to the construction, a number of the pay parking spaces behind the hospice will be used by the contractors for the duration of the project.