Patient focus in new hospital planning

Times-Herald photo by Lisa Goudy

Five Hills Health Region exercise therapist Dot Hicks talks about one of the initial models conceived this past week for the new hospital at the report out on Friday.

Published on November 9, 2012

Lisa Goudy

Patient Rick Farrant had his doubts about the new hospital and for him being involved in the planning process this week.

“(I was) very skeptical. (I) thought I’d been sucked into something that I had no business being in,” said Farrant, who has continuing cardiac health problems. “When I came back after lunch, they were actually asking me things. I wasn’t an outsider anymore. They wanted to bring me into the circle and that amazed me … I have a future now.”

Farrant was one of approximately 45 participants involved in the Five Hills Health Region (FHHR)’s third session of new hospital planning 3-P (production preparation process) that took place from Monday to Friday. The report out was presented on Friday after a week of brainstorming. The new hospital on Diefenbaker Drive is expected to be completed in 2015 and will replace the Moose Jaw Union Hospital.

“I thought (health care) service was a dead issue. I thought it was gone forever,” said Farrant. “With this process coming in, everything changes. Everything is now patient-centred. I matter again.”

John Liguori, FHHR new hospital project executive director, said the client focus is an essential role in the process leading up to the new hospital.

“(In the past) often we were making assumptions, always with the best intentions but never having the patient right there when we’re making those decisions,” said Liguori. “They’re the focus of everything we do.”

He said the process is called collaborative care, which includes opinions from patients and family care, therapies, patient education and mental health and addictions, among others.

For more information, see an upcoming edition of the Times-Herald.

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