A look inside the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital as opening nears

Alberta Health Services says there will be 243 beds at GRPH, compared to 181 at the existing QEII hospital.

Senior Operations Officer for Grande Prairie and Area Stacey Greening says although construction on the project has been long, she believes residents across the region will feel like the wait was worth it once patients and families can step inside the building.

Greening adds there were two phases of the project, which were factored into the wait to open the facility, with phase one being the handing over of the keys in June 2020.

However, the wait to open in December 2021 came with the build of additional units in the hospital.

“So, phase two included the mental health unit and an additional medical unit that wasn’t built when we had key handover in June of last summer,” she said.

“In addition to that, we’ve had investment through the Alberta Surgical Initiative that allowed us to build out two additional (Operating rooms) theatres.”

The Alberta Surgical Initiative provided two of the 11 OR room suites along with a dedicated obstetrical OR in the maternity unit.

Surgical room (Abby Zieverink / EverthingGP staff)

Maternity Unit (Abby Zieverink / EverythingGP staff)

Greening says they wanted to wait to open the hospital after the completion of the mental health unit, additional medical unit and OR theatres.

“We’re making sure we don’t have to operate to acute care hospitals and send patients back and forth,” said Greening.

“So, if we had opened prior to the mental health unit opening, that would mean that we would have mental patients show up to the emergency department here and then have to be transported to the QEII.”

She adds this will lead to an overall enhanced patient journey at the new hospital.

“They can have one single care team at one site, and we can take care of them all in one building. So in the long run, it’s better for patient safety, patient care and the patient experience overall.”

One large focus for the GPRH is what AHS describes as a “state of the art” cancer centre, which includes two radiation vaults, allowing for radiation therapy services to occur in the Grande Prairie area for the first time.

With that, Greening says GPRH will now be one of five sites in Alberta providing radiation therapy.

One of two radiation therapy machines at the hospital (Photo: Abby Zieverink/ EverythingGP, staff)

Radiation therapy entrances (Abby Zieverink / EverythingGP, staff)

“It really puts us into an elite group of hospitals that offer that level of service. We’re very grateful for cancer care, partnering with us to build out that service within our site,” she added.

“So, it allows us to serve not only those in Grande Prairie but throughout the region and beyond. That really helps us eliminate that need to travel.”

Cancer treatment area (Abby Zieverink / EverythingGP, staff)

Greening says all the features of the new hospital are designed in a way that focuses on patient care and recovery, but as well as family comfort as well.

“With the safety features and all of the technology, that’s super important, but just that the safe space and being inclusive and really welcoming to the families really enhances that experience, and I think that’s why that’s really important to us.”

Some of these safety features are implemented into the specialized spaces for mental health supports available.

AHS says the mental health unit at the new hospital increases psychiatric inpatient capacity with 14 adult spaces, six psychiatric ICU spaces, and four geriatric spaces at the opening.

Geriatiric mental health unit represented with grey (Abby Zieverink/ EverythingGP staff)

Greening explains these new enhancements to mental health include the pediatric and youth mental health-focused units, which are new in the North Zone.

Youth mental health unit room (Abby Zieverink / EverythingGP, staff)

Four additional youth psychiatric spaces within a separate pod and five pediatric mental health spaces in a stand-alone section of the pediatric unit.

“This unit is purposely designed for a variety of mental health patients, so on our pediatric spaces, where we have our youngest mental health patients that are specifically designed for their needs,” Greening said.

“This allows us to do offer that service and a purposefully designed space for those patients for specific needs and also minimizes their need to be transferred out to another facility.”

With a high priority on outdoor areas, Greening explains a courtyard in the mental health unit allows for patients to go outside the hospital without a pass.

Something she says was not possible at the QEII.

One of the courtyards (Abby Zieverink/ EverythingGP staff)

“It allows them to be both unattended and attended depending on where they are in their healing journey,” she explained.

“So (it) just allows for some really great programming to happen outside with the beauty of the parks, the trails, all of those things within viewing space, and then also allow them to be in a safe space if they need that space and allows our staff to provide that kind of service.”

The new hospital includes many large windows and photos of nature from local photographers in the Peace Region.