Cost refresh underway of renal, oncology expansion at Cranbrok hospital<\/p>\n
Published 9:15 am Monday, December 15, 2025<\/p>\n
Updated costs for the renal and oncology expansion at the East Kootenay Regional Hospital are still in the works, as the province and Interior Health work to add a third floor into the project\u2019s scope.<\/p>\n
The initial proposal only included two floors \u2014 one for renal and one for oncology \u2014 however, the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District successfully lobbied the province to provisionally include a third floor in order to alleviate capacity pressures on other areas of the hospital.<\/p>\n
According to an update from Interior Health during a board meeting on Dec. 12, finalized costs and funding requests to the KERHD board is expected early next year, while the business plan is expected to be completed and sent to the Ministry of Infrastructure by Spring 2026.<\/p>\n
While the third floor proposal has yet to be formally approved by the province, preliminary uses identified by Interior Health include services for cardiology, pulmonary\/respiratory and pre-surgical screening.<\/p>\n
\u201cProvisionally, this is what they would like to put into that third floor, because that is what would work best to ease pressures around the emergency department,\u201d said David Wilks, KERHD board chair and mayor of Sparwood, during the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre there probably more optimal uses for that third floor? Probably, but the challenge is there\u2019s no plan for a new tower at EKRH, and when I say no plan, that means the province is not even talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that means you\u2019re at least 15-20 years out, at least. So you\u2019ve got what you\u2019ve got. So we\u2019ve got to make do with what we have and the only way to do that is to allow Interior Health to figure out operationally what they think they need to get into that third floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now it\u2019s notional, it\u2019s not written in stone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some complicated challenges remain outstanding.<\/p>\n
Initially approved at $59 million in 2024, the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District board voted this past summer to provide additional funding towards the third floor addition.<\/p>\n
Health care infrastructure projects in the region are typically cost-shared 60 per cent by the province, and up to 40 per cent by the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District, which is funded by property taxation across the East Kootenay, including Creston and Golden.<\/p>\n
At minimum, the addition of a third floor costs $30 million, according to a cost estimate from Interior Health.<\/p>\n
The province told the board it would support the addition of a third floor in principle, if KERHD funded 100 per cent of the cost, instead of the usual 40 per cent.<\/p>\n
However, KERHD also has a $15 million donation from Elk Valley Resources available as a contribution towards the project, meaning the board only needs to provide an additional $15 million, which it approved this past summer.<\/p>\n
So, under the current public budget numbers, that means the KERHD board is on the hook for $23.2 million \u2014 as per the original two-storey scope for 40 per cent of the original $59 million budget \u2014 as well as a further $15 million towards the third floor project.<\/p>\n
Given that a cost refresh is underway, those numbers are subject to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cost refresh underway of renal, oncology expansion at Cranbrok hospital Published 9:15 am Monday, December 15, 2025 Updated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-349428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}