New acute care tower coming to Surrey Memorial Hospital

The Lower Mainland’s fastest-growing city is getting a boost to its health-care services.

The B.C. government announced Monday that a new acute care tower will be built at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Premier David Eby shared that the new tower will ensure “residents of Surrey get top quality maternity care and … top quality specialty care.”

“It will take pressure off of the overcrowded emergency room here at Surrey Memorial Hospital. It will ensure that kids who are sick get access to the pediatric care that they need,” he added.

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Eby said Surrey needs adequate access to health care to keep up with its quickly growing population.

“People need to know health care is accessible, not after a long wait or a long drive to another community. World-class health care should be available right here in Surrey. Today, I am announcing that a new acute care tower is on the way for the Surrey Memorial Hospital to help meet local needs by adding more hospital beds and more services south of the Fraser River.”

The province explained that in the next 15 to 18 months, the project will enter the “business-planning” phase, which will determine budget, timelines, and procurement strategies.

“Last summer, I announced 30 actions to improve health care for people in Surrey after meeting with and listening to the needs of health-care workers at Surrey Memorial Hospital, and we are already seeing great progress,” Health Minister Adrian Dix said. “This announcement builds on those actions, as well the construction of a new hospital and cancer centre, and plans to open a new medical school, the first one in about 50 years in Western Canada.”

Dix explained the new tower is slated to be located on the site of the Charles Barham Pavilion.

The announcement comes after the region and its residents have called on the government to address Surrey’s access to health care.

In the spring of 2023, front-line health-care workers sounded the alarm, saying the hospital was operating in “crisis” mode. A group of physicians said they felt “compelled to inform the public of the unsafe conditions that have come to exist in our hospital, and what has been told to the community is incomplete.”

In November of last year, portable buildings were set up in a parking lot for a potential surge in patients.

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While officials pushed back on some of the characterizations, a meeting was held between stakeholders, with action items ultimately being put together to improve care.

Dix said Thursday there’s been some movement on the staffing front.

“We recruited 21 new resident clinical associates to support the work of hospitalists and internal medicine physicians. This has been a long-standing issue in Fraser Health — one that, under Dr. Lee’s direction, we have made real progress on,” he said.

“We recruited 75 internationally educated nurses to enhance staffing levels at Surrey Memorial Hospital, which brings safer care to patients. We’re recruiting 70 more physicians to work at Surrey Memorial Hospital, hiring 117 new nursing graduates and 164 employed student-nurses at Surrey Memorial Hospital.”

According to the province, almost 700,000 people live in Surrey, with that number expected to continue growing. The city’s population grew by 3.8 per cent in 2023 — an average of more than 2,000 per month from 2022 to 2023.

Surrey Memorial medical staff welcome announcement

Health care workers at the hospital are celebrating Monday’s announcement, with the president of the hospital’s Medical Staff Association saying he’s pleased that the government has listened to their needs.

“We’re really, really happy,” Dr. Amoljeet Lail told CityNews. “It shows how important physician advocacy is.”

“It’s going to be a big positive for the community of Surrey Memorial, and really, all of Fraser Health,” he added.

Lail explained that the hospital and region have seen increasing wait times for obstetrical care, with big concerns over radiology, emergency, and surgical wait times, and “certainly these are problems plaguing the entire province, but Surrey is such a rapidly growing city, and the hospital really needed an expansion.”

Lail said, however, that the association will wait to see what level designation of trauma care the tower receives.

“Our Medical Staff Association will work closely with Doctors of BC and our health authority and ministry partners in terms of making sure that the feedback and the needs of the physicians and frontline health care staff at Surrey are being addressed and listened to,” Lial added.

-With files from Hana Mae Nassar and Angela Bower