Photo credit: EverythingGP staff.

By Curtis Galbraith

Healthcare

Beaverlodge’s new Mountivew Health Complex to provide 24/7 urgent care

Nov 26, 2024 | 6:00 AM

The new Mountview Health Complex coming to Beaverlodge will be set up to provide urgent care 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

Beaverlodge Mayor Gary Rycroft says Alberta Health Services had been looking at 16 hours per day, something he says does not serve the community well as “you don’t have a handle on when you’re going to need urgent care.”

“The doctors have to bear a lot of credit for this. They negotiated, they’re the ones with the knowledge and the information to explain to them what their data says and what it really means because, sometimes, stats. don’t mean what they think it does.”

Rycroft says many places have staff shortages, but the province is training more nurses and recruiting more doctors.

“By the time this place is open could have most of that filled. We’re running a facility now. Those people will just move over.”

Rycroft believes that the new doctor training program that starts in Grande Prairie in the fall of 2025 will help with staffing issues in Beaverlodge.

The new complex is expected to open in 2028.

Rycroft says they had hoped to start construction this summer, but some things took longer than anticipated. He now says they will probably start moving dirt as soon as the snow is gone.

A release from the provincial government also says functional planning is now complete and the project is entering the design phase.

An in-person town hall is planned for December 4 to “keep the community informed” according to that same release.

Rycroft says this is a chance for the public to see the plans for the new facility.

“They can have their input to say, you know, this should be bigger or that should be smaller. Whether it will change or not, at least they will have a view and a voice.”

That town hall will start at 6 p.m. on the fourth at the Beaverlodge Community Centre.

In it’s 2024-25 budget, the province included $25.2 million over three years for the project.