Longtime health care advocates in Weyburn were extremely happy to see the announcement on Friday of the selected site for the city’s new hospital, to be built and opened by 2023, after years of waiting for the news to come.
The 35-bed integrated health care facility will be built on Fifth Avenue North between Fifth Street and Hamilton Street.
Marga Cugnet, whose 42-year career in health care began as a nurse at the Weyburn General Hospital and ended as the CEO of the Sun Country Health Region in 2017, was present as a guest of MLA Dustin Duncan.
Numbers were limited at the announcement due to restrictions imposed due to COVID-19, and Duncan said he was allowed three invites. He invited Cugnet, and former hospital foundation leaders Kim Thorson and Bill Holliday.
“As you can imagine, I was ecstatic when I got the message from minister Duncan’s office that the announcement of this project moving forward would be coming today,” she said. “This is a reward really for the community of Weyburn and the surrounding RMs. These people have stuck by this project. I know people have at times been frustrated, and now they’re going to see it’s actually happening.”
She said this will also be welcome news for health care staff, who have had to work in the outdated facilities of the Weyburn General Hospital, and will now have a state-of-the-art 35-bed facility that will integrate most health care services now provided in the city.
“The staff have been working in some conditions … and spaces that just don’t work to provide services, so I think this is going to be pretty exciting for the staff as well,” said Cugnet.
Referencing the integrated service that this new facility will provide, she said, “Inpatient services was the focus way back in the 50s, and now we’re looking at outpatient services and community services, and the more we can integrate those the better it is for our patients and for the community, and really for the staff as well. Say a social worker needs to talk to someone in mental health, well they won’t have to go far. It will all be in one site. It’ll be interesting to see how they organize it and put it all together.”
She noted this was part of the plans when they started dreaming of a new hospital many years ago, to include the mental health care beds near the acute care beds.
“I think this is pretty exciting. We’ve been planning and talking about this for a few years, and now to actually see this is proceeding is going to be great for the community,” said Cugnet. “It’s a great location too. It’s close to the highways for EMS.”
During the scrum, Duncan mentioned that part of the plan in buying the 20-acre parcel from the City is to have room for if and when the Weyburn Special Care Home needs replacing, as then there would be room to build that onto this facility.
“That was talked about as well,” noted Cugnet, pointing out this is the advantage of centralizing services in location, as long-term care patients could be taken care of if an acute-care need comes up.
The plans early on were also for the hospital to be built onto the Tatagwa View long-term centre, she said, but the needs for the hospital were too great to be located there.
“Things change, and the way we do things in health care changes as well,” said Cugnet, noting that by the time this new facility opens in 2023, “who knows what might be developed for technology in three years?”
