Orillia’s Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital is one step closer to being rebuilt at a new location.
Since being built more than a century ago, the hospital has gone through several renovations.
The hospital’s CEO argues it’s time to stop the Band-Aid fixes and build something new.
“We can get a better hospital, done faster, and cheaper if we start on a new site,” Carmine Stumpo says.
Stumpo made a case for a new facility to a packed house at a public meeting on Wednesday evening.
Plans were presented for a new, larger state-of-the-art hospital to be built at a new site in the next 15 years.
The location of where to put the new hospital hasn’t been decided.
There are also big plans for the existing site to possibly be turned into a multi-purpose hub for medical care with everything from housing to long-term care, to transitional care for those who are ready to leave the hospital, but not quite ready to go home.
“If we can move some of those folks that need this alternative level of care into another facility, that might be one of the repurposing things that we could put on that site,” says Mayor Steve Clarke.
With Orillia's aging population, both the mayor and the hospital’s CEO agree these plans are crucial.
The hospital board plans to submit its master plan for the hospital to the province in 2019. It will also consult the public as they begin looking for a site for the new hospital.
