Calgary Herald overlooks its own scoop. CHR Chair Jim Dinning tells Herald the new ACH "will not be for everyone". 
(July 12 editorial)

Planning a new hospital takes five years. That’s what Calgary Health Region VP Bob Holmes said at the last public CHR Board meeting, on June 28, talking about the South Hospital Campus. 

Planning for the new Children’s Hospital has been underway only since last September. Why then are the CHR and University of Calgary trying to stampede City Council into approving a hazy plan whose outline changes from week to week?

A key element of the project is still missing. Without the Programs and Services Report, promised for last November, parents cannot know what part of the proposed Child Health Network will offer the services their children need. 

Although a Herald editorial on July 12 said that objections to the chosen site, “are coming from a vocal few,” the CHR Site Selection Committee’s report in December acknowledged that most of the parents, patients and healthcare workers they consulted preferred either the Fire Park or the Lincoln Park site.

After a meeting with Jim Dinning, the Herald editorialized that, “The hospital, after all, is not really meant for everyone,” that it will “be designed specifically for children with chronic-care needs – cancer, heart disease, diabetes.” 

Parents across the city gasped in disbelief at this unexpected, unexplained policy change. Where should parents take children with acute conditions such as bowel obstructions, convulsions, or compound fractures, if not to the Children’s Hospital? The Peter Lougheed  is only other hospital in Calgary that even has pediatric beds right now. 

The Site Selection Committee argued that, although the new hospital would have only four more beds than the current Alberta Children’s Hospital  (150, compared to 146), it would relieve overcrowding in the present ACH Emergency Room, which it said handles 42,000 visits a year in space built for 25,000.

REACH Committee test-drove to the various sites from six perimeter points in Calgary, and found that, generally, the drives to the northwest U of C site were five to ten minutes longer than to northeast Fire Park, southwest Lincoln Park, or central Bridgeland. Ten minutes could be the difference between life and death, in an emergency.

However, the CHR now says that it will build other emergency facilities to take the load off the Children’s Hospital’s Emergency Room. The CHR now says there are 115 beds at the
current site and that it plans 165 beds for the new site. And it says the Child Health Network is supposed to provide other venues for some of the 75,000  therapy visits every year.

Such informal announcements do not clarify  what the heck will go in the proposed Children’s Hospital. Current plans are to build about a million square feet of hospital – for 165 beds. This conjures up visions of nurses on roller skates. 

More, it creates suspicion that the CHR has a private agenda, perhaps to expand Foothills Hospital into the new ACH. Then there’s the $30 million in provincial funding for infrastructure and an overpass, which also seems to serve another agenda – to open a light industrial research park, from which the University hopes to generate revenue.

The CHR treats any questioning as criticism, and warns that any delay might endanger children’s healthcare. But the side-effects of putting both the new Colonel Belcher and the new ACH so close to Foothills Hospital will touch all Calgarians. 

Three hospitals in a small (2 square km) area would increase pressure to ease north-south traffic by extending Shaganappi Trail across the Bow River through Edworthy Park, an unpopular idea in the past.

Also, two Dangerous Goods routes border this small area: the truck route on Highway 1,  and the main east-west railway. If chlorine or liquified gasses spilled on road or rail, Disaster Services could be faced with evacuating 1200 patients, as well as several nearby longterm Care Centres, even as the emergency blocked access to half of Calgary’s hospital capacity.

On July 23, City Council voted to approve a recommendation to advance ACH plans by approving the 16th Avenue interchange and other connections with City roads. REACH calls on U of C and the CHR to halt construction until after the City Council and CHR elections. REACH calls on the City to work with the CHR to put the Children’s Hospital where it meets patients and parents’ needs, and City transportation policies.