More access to healthcare for the Civic's Centennial?

If you didn't see the story in the Metro last week regarding the future of the Civic here is the link: http://metronews.ca/news/ottawa/254085/ottawa-needs-a-new-hospital-maybe-at-the-experimental-farm-kitts/

Access to healthcare is difficult now and will only get worse as the population ages. 

Our local icon-the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital was built in the 1920's to support the community needs during the Spanish Flu epidemic and over the years has been added on to, reconstructed in areas and renovated to the extent that they could in order to deliver the best possible healthcare to not just our community and our city but nationally as it is home to Canada’s largest and foremost cardiovascular health centre which sees over 80,000 cardiac patients a year. 

On May 17th, Dr. Gisele Microys and myself met with Cameron Love, the Senior Vice President of Clinical Programs, Planning and Support Services at TOH to discuss updates to their plans to provide parking in support of the Heart Institute expansion.  It was then that we learned about the possibility of the Civic moving across the street to the experimental farm.  Financing, building and moving a hospital of this size is not a quick or easy task regardless of the location.  We were told that a project such as this would likely take 15-20 years to complete but the migration of some buildings would occur incrementally as the new buildings were constructed.  If, it were to move across the street to the farm, the first phase would be to construct a parking lot to accommodate the heart institute expansion and provide parking for staff that are currently parking on Champagne Ave and taking a shuttle bus to the hospital.  (The Champagne lot will cease to exist soon because of a new development that will be built.)  

There is no plan at this point to make any major changes to the Ruskin Lot.  The lot will likely continue to be used as it currently is for parking until the migration of the hospital is complete at which time the hospital expects to return it to the community as a green space or park.

We will be meeting with Mr. Love again in the Fall for another update.  He has offered to attend one of our public meetings to do a Q&A session on this topic as well so we will invite him to attend our end of year public meetings.