Blood Tribe Health Centre

Page 15

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The people working at Blood Tribe Health Centre are beginning to feel more like health care workers and less like sardines now that the new building expansion has been completed.

The grand opening of the expansion took place on July 18, with speeches from dignitaries and even a little entertainment.

The 1,490 square metres of new space connects two existing buildings-the health clinic and the long term care facility- and provides for office space and clinic areas for as many as 50 employees serving a community of 8,000 people.

There is even a space set aside for a possible emergency care area. It's intended to house the community health unit and the home care program.

In line with the Blood Tribe's vision of being as healthy a community as possible, the new building will give them more tools toward the realization of that goal.

The general contractor for the project was St. Mary's Construction of the Blood reserve. And a bonus of the expansion was that 80 per cent of the $2.5 million construction project was done by Native, on-reserve labor.

A spokesperson for the health centre said the expansion will improve access for the public now that everything will be located in one building.

The original community health building was built for half the number of staff and made working conditions difficult. The new building gives workers space and provides more treatment area. And moves the home care to an area that gives workers the elbow room they need and gets them out of the long term care centre, which will be soon needing the space back.

The Blood Tribe administrates its own health services and with the increased community awareness of their programs there is more utilization of those services.

With the future of the hospital at nearby Fort McLeod in question, the Blood Tribe may also be required to pick up the slack left behind by its possible closure, increading demand for home care. So the expansion is just in the nick of time.

It was a pretty simple design and construction, said Guy Pocock, an associate and architect with Kasian Kennedy, Architecture, Interior Design and Planning, Inc. That is until you factor in the bizarre summer weather southern Alberta has been having.

"Down in Stand Off they had just the strangest year for weather. We were building in the middle of the flood season and they had late spring snow, which caused delays in the construction there. We had snow inside the building and snow all around. Really it was battling the elements and the unusual and unexpected things than anything difficult about the building itself," he said.

They persevered and it all came together in the end.

The firm has been associated with the Blood Tribe department of health for many years, through a company that was blended with Kasian Kennedy. Caruthers and Associates did the original clinic building in the early 1980s, and in the 1990s, Kasian Kennedy did the Kainai Continuing Care Centre, which is the seniors housing complex, said Pocock.

"They had community health and home care workers who were in a very tight work area in their current clinic building and they had arranged with Health Canada to give them funds for the expansion," Pocock said. Application to the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch was approved in the fall of 2000. Design plans were begun in February 2001. Construction started in September that same year.

The Blood Tribe department of health had the architectural program largely worked out before Kasian Kennedy got involved, Pocock said. A number of trial designs were worked through, with the idea of creating the most workable space possible, then the details of finishes and furnishings were decided.