ESTEVAN - The provincial budget handed down on March 23 includes money for a new regional nursing home in Estevan for the second straight year.
Don Kindopp, who is the chairperson of the new nursing home committee, said he appreciates the inclusion of the project, but he was surprised the money is to be directed for planning and a needs assessment.
“I thought last year’s budget of $275,000 was the funds to complete that study and the needs assessment,” said Kindopp. “To learn there was another $200,000 there for the same thing, it sort of got me wondering to the fact that maybe there’s a sort of per payment on the needs assessment.”
Estevan was one of three projects in the province to get money for planning and a needs assessment, with the others being the Yorkton Regional Health Centre replacement and the new long-term care facility in Watson.
Kindopp believes the funding does show that Estevan’s new nursing home is still on the province’s radar.
“We’ve met with members of the Saskatchewan Health Authority twice, and we have a meeting planned for … the latter part of April,” said Kindopp. “We left our last meeting with several questions for them to answer.”
During a meeting last October, the SHA said a needs assessment needs to be completed. When they met again in January, that was still on the table. A needs assessment that was completed years ago, but this would be a new version.
Kindopp noted there was some frustration when the two sides met back in January because the nursing home committee supplied a number of questions to the health authority. They didn’t have answers at the time, but they expect to have answers for April.
“We would like to continue to be involved in a collaborative sort of way with the health authority and the (health) ministry and the government on the replacement of the Estevan Regional Nursing Home, and so that’s our end game is to be collaborative and have some input and some say,” said Kindopp.
The people in the Estevan area know what’s best for them and what the community needs, and so they want to work with the government on the needs assessment and the design and location for the nursing home.
Kindopp said the committee will ask the government questions about expected cost, location, naming rights from fundraising and a partnership with the local committee on design. And they want to know when it will happen and the steps that will be required.
“We’ve been this now for a long, long time, and yet we haven’t had any definite decisions made along some of those questions that we had.”
The nursing home committee has had the necessary funds for the project to proceed - $8 million, or 20 per cent, of the projected $40 million cost – since 2015.
