New St. Paul’s and R&D centre approved

VANCOUVER – The government of BC has given the green light to a new St. Paul’s Hospital. The new facility will cost $1.9 billion; it will contain 548 beds, 115 more than the current facility, and a research centre will open concurrently with the hospital in 2026.

“For over 125 years, people in Vancouver and across British Columbia have benefited from the healthcare provided by St. Paul’s Hospital,” said Premier John Horgan. “Today, we are safeguarding these life-saving services by taking action to build a brand-new St. Paul’s Hospital that will serve more people and offer better access to the specialized care people need.”

The new, downtown site will be the home of several leading provincial programs and referral centres, including for heart and lung care, renal, eating disorders and specialty surgeries and transplants.

The hospital will also offer a diverse and long list of general and specialized care, including HIV/AIDS, chronic disease management services, emergency and critical care, mental health and addictions beds and programs, ambulatory services and outpatient clinics, end-of-life care, Indigenous health, maternity, colorectal and gastrointestinal services, and community care and community outreach programs.

Healthcare workers, researchers and students will harness the medical tools of the future in the new hospital, with medical projects like immunotherapy, precision medicine, virtual reality, robotics and 3-D printing. Medical records, test results and images will be instantly and securely accessible to patients and their care team no matter where people are in the hospital or the province. This will help to empower patients so they can take more control of their own health.

St. Paul’s will continue to be a teaching hospital, training hundreds of University of British Columbia medical students, British Columbia Institute of Technology nursing students and hundreds of other health-sector professions.

Integration of care, teaching and research – with emphasis on new knowledge rapidly translated into patient care solutions – will continue to be the focus of its research centres and specialized programs.

“British Columbians have always expressed great confidence, and taken great comfort, in the care delivered by St. Paul’s. After more than a decade and a half of stalling, it is exciting to give the green light to a new, state-of-the-art St. Paul’s Hospital that will continue this legacy for many years to come,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. “Our government has made it a priority to see this project move forward, so that St. Paul’s continues to serve people around the province now and in the future.”

The project will be delivered using a design-build finance procurement model and will be cost-shared between the provincial government and Providence Health Care. The St. Paul’s Foundation campaign fundraising goal for Providence Health Care is anticipated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars with a portion allocated to the new core hospital.

Jim Pattison, chairman and CEO of the Jim Pattison Group, has already donated $75 million to the future of St. Paul’s, a historic contribution in Canadian healthcare philanthropy. The current St. Paul’s Hospital land at 1081 Burrard Street will be sold with funds going toward the project.