This year, Orillia’s Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital is celebrating its 111th birthday.
While it celebrates its deep roots in the city’s downtown, it is contemplating a future that looks more and more like a new location for a new hospital is on the horizon.
Last year, the hospital’s board of directors announced they want to see a new facility - likely to be in the neighbourhood of 830,000 square feet or double the size of the current hospital - built on a different site.
Officials estimate the new hospital will require a 20-acre site; the current hospital footprint is about nine acres.
Coun. Ted Emond serves as the mayor’s designate on the Hospital of Tomorrow steering committee, which has been working to shape the future of OSMH and determine what a new hospital might look like and where it might be located.
At a recent steering committee meeting, Emond had an epiphany of sorts.
“It was evident in those discussions that everyone accepted the fact that a hospital in Orillia is an important community asset and we need to have a hospital in our community,” said Emond.
“The board of directors of the hospital had confirmed in their decisions that any future hospital should be located in the city ... but they had not considered, in a narrower sense, that our current hospital has a significant impact economically as an employer and as an engine of economic development in our downtown core.”
Emond said it’s vital “to understand the impact of potentially relocating to another site.”
He said a move “may be, by far, the best thing for us to do in this community” and noted there will be “ample opportunity to review” that.
However, Emond said he “felt it was important for us to be prepared for any discussions of that nature.”
With that in mind, he won support of his council colleagues Monday to have city staff “determine the scope, scale and cost of commissioning an economic impact study assessment” of the hospital on the city and region, focusing on “the impact of the hospital on businesses located in the downtown core.”
Emond said he has spoken to hospital president and CEO Carmine Stumpo about the idea.
“He concurs there is no question that economic impact is a criteria, though he doesn’t want it to become the only criteria,” noted Emond.
The second-term Ward 1 councillor conceded there are “multiple” locations being considered.
“I just wanted to make sure we had hard data, evidenced-based data about the impact of our hospital in and around not only our City of Orillia, because I think that’s important, but in terms of the core of our city.”
Coun. Ralph Cipolla applauded the idea and noted he has received feedback from some who have said they will “fight tooth and nail” a relocation of the hospital.
He said Emond’s call for an impact study will “become the most important thing we’ve done in the last few years.”
Emond noted the city is in a unique position to play a role in the ongoing discussions.
He said the process of developing a new hospital is managed “between the hospital board under the Hospital Act and the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care and their capital branch."
He noted “there is a whole series of very, very challenging and difficult steps to go through” and said the process “doesn’t contemplate the involvement of a municipality as a decision maker.”
Emond said he is thankful the OSMH board “has recognized that partnering with the municipality both in terms of potential location and, to be quite candid, in terms of the capital costs of the new hospital in this new era, which are huge, and that the city and citizens would be involved in that is important.”
He said “it’s rare across the province” for the city to be at the table during such negotiations.
“So, in that role, I have the opportunity to raise questions, to prod and observe what’s happening,” said Emond. “This is a product of that,” he said of his call for an impact study.
He is hopeful the evidence and data collected “will be something valuable to the hospital as it goes forward.”
Decisions at council committee are subject to ratification at Thursday’s council meeting.
