Two additional operating rooms are being added to the new Grande Prairie Regional Hospital, totalling to 11 rooms to better serve northern Alberta.
The operating rooms were built and equipped with $20 million of the $120 million committed by the provincial government over the next three years to upgrade and expand hospital operating rooms and surgical sites around the province as part of the Alberta Surgical Initiative.
It’s estimated the additional rooms will allow for around 3,000 to 4,000 more surgeries every year; driving wait times down for procedures like hip, knee and cataract surgeries. Other procedures will also surgeries include kidney stones, bladder and prostate tumours, bowel and hernia surgeries and bariatric surgeries and breast reconstruction surgeries will also be scheduled.
Around 11,000 surgeries are currently being performed every year at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Grande Prairie with only six operating rooms. 14,00 to 15,000 surgeries will be performed annually at the new Grande Prairie Regional Hospital.
Alberta Infrastructure began working on the two new operating rooms in summer 2020 and construction is expected to be complete at the end of July. The space will be turned over to Alberta Health Services as part of the commissioning of the entire hospital.
A 28 bed mental health unit and an additional 32 bed acute care unit are also in the final stages of construction at the hospital and should be complete later this summer.
The hospital is set to open to the public later this year.
-Erika Rolling, Trending 55 Newsroom
