Province commits $35M to Moncton Hospital project

New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant announced Tuesday that his government will put almost $35 million into building separate maternity, newborn and neonatal intensive care units at the Moncton Hospital.

"The investments that we're announcing today will help the Moncton Hospital provide health care to New Brunswickers and their families in state-of-the-art facilities," Gallant said to an audience gathered in the hospital's atrium.

It's not the standard of care and it hasn't been the standard of care for a long time.- Dr. Ken Gillespie, medical director of women and children's health

The money will be paid out over the next five years with anexpected completion datefor the project in 2022 and some of thefunds will be used to relocateand improve the hospital's cardiac care areas.

The announcement came almost a full year after the hospital closed its labour and delivery unit and started delivering babies in its anteand postpartum unit. The hospital made themove last year after it was discovered that the ventilation system in the labour and delivery unit had rust contamination.

The new project involves amalgamating the maternity, newborn and neonatal intensive care units, adjacent to an operating room.

"The efficiencies and the safety thatthat brings to the delivery experience is sort of hard to quantify, but it's a real thing and it's a palpable thing," said Dr. Ken Gillespie, medical director of women and children's health.

In addition, he said, it will give patients and their families greater privacy and improve the quality of the experience.

"When you're asking women to breastfeed and to get to know their new baby and you have other people in the room with them, that's just not a great way to deliver this type of care," Gillespie said.

"It's not the standard of care and it hasn't been the standard of care for a long time," he continued. "So, this will really help to bring us up to the type of care and the quality of care that we should be delivering to our patients and that they deserve."

The quality of care he's referring to would see a private room for each patient. It might also allow each mother to stay in the same room for her delivery and postpartum care.

The hospital will need about 20 rooms all of which it wants to be private in order to meet its needs for obstetrics and maternity.

Gillespie said the Moncton Hospital receives patients from Campbellton, Bathurst and Miramichi, as well as the nearby Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, and even Amherst, N.S.

"So, really what this is, is an investment in improving the quality of care for not just families in the Moncton area, but for really the eastern half of the province."

'It's full steam ahead'

Hospitalchief of staff, Dr. Serge Melanson, said the funding allows the hospital to proceed with the redevelopment of the labour and delivery unit, neonatal intensive care unit and new cardiac care units all of which he saidare in "desperate need of renovation."

"Without the funding announcement and the dollars to go with the projects, we were at a bit of a standstill, but now it's full steam ahead, basically," Melanson said.

As for specific services, the chief of staff said that the Moncton Hospital will be able to enhance the maternal-fetal health services offered in its labour and delivery unit. That's a sub-speciality of obstetrics that manages high-risk or complicated pregnancies, he explained, adding that it isn't available at every hospital in the province.