Ottawa Hospital gets $3M boost to plan Civic move

The Ottawa Hospital will spend the next year working with engineers and consultants to determine which of its health serviceswill be housed at a new Civic campusnear Dow's Lake, how big thebuildings need to beand how those buildings will be connected.

Ottawa's Liberal MPPsannounced a $3-million grant Monday toward thisnext stage of planning for the hospital.

"This will take us to a point where we'll have a very solid vision in terms of what the functional requirements are and what the initial cost estimates will be," said Cameron Love, the Ottawa Hospital's chief operating officer.

Previous estimates have pegged the cost ofa new hospital at $2 billion. Love said hospitals typically spend five years planning and the nextfive years on construction, sothe Ottawa Hospital hopes to open a new Civic campus by 2026.

Trauma unit, heart institute to remain at Civic

The planning grant comesless than two weeks after the same politicianscame together to end a tumultuous process for choosing a federal site for the hospital, rejecting the NCC's original recommendation of Tunney's Pasture.

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Love said the hospitalwill spend the next year updatingplanning work it did nearly a decade ago, and consulting with teams from its more than 60 clinical departmentsand support units.

Love said the Civicwill continue to house the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, the traumaunit, neurosciencesand a unit for newborns.

As for planning what happens with the current, aging Civic hospital site, Love said that process hasn't begun butwill involve plenty of consultation with the City of Ottawa, various community associations and the Champlain Local Health Integration Network.