The Stollery Children’s Hospital delivers some of the most specialized children’s health care in Canada, but it’s bursting at its seams — struggling to keep up with demand while having nowhere to grow.
While work is underway to build a new standalone facility, officials say they need the community’s help.
“We’re out of space and we are not meeting hospital standards,” Karen Faulkner, the president and CEO of the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation said.
Since its inception 25 years ago, the Stollery has existed as a hospital-inside-a-hospital on the University of Alberta campus, sharing physical space with the U of A Hospital in its Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre.
The current facility is landlocked. A growing Alberta population and more demand on both adult and children’s acute care is causing major strains.
Both the provincial government and the Stollery agree the only option is a new facility.
The foundation has launched it’s most ambitious fundraising endeavor yet: the No Bounds campaign, a multi-year fundraising initiative to raise $1-billion to complete the project.
The money is needed to contribute to the cost of a new building and to fund essential programs, equipment, research and training.
The Corus Radiothon is a big part of the fundraiser and 2026 is the first year the main focus will be on building the new hospital. The goal is to raise $1.9-million this year alone.
“This is the first year, and it’s an opportunity to really start off right and strong,” Faulkner said.
The Stollery has the largest catchment area of any children’s hospital in North America, covering more than half a billion square kilometres from Winnipeg to Vancouver and up into the Northwest Territories.
The current site within the University of Alberta Hospital opened in 2001 and has 236 beds — the second-largest children’s hospital in Canada after SickKids in Toronto.
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Nearly 40 per cent of the Stollery’s patients come from outside of Edmonton.
“It’s a hospital with adults and adult problems, so kids are seeing things they probably shouldn’t see,” Faulkner said.
“We absolutely have to do this. And it’s gonna take years to build a hospital. We have to start now.”
Building a hospital from the ground up is a complex, challenging endeavour.
“The project has begun, planning is happening, progress is good, pace is good, but we really need the community to show their support through their donations to keep that momentum up.”
The new Stollery will be at the northeast corner of 122 Street and 51 Avenue, on what is currently farmland on the University of Alberta’s South Campus. The planning phase is anticipated to be complete in 2026.
When the stand-alone hospital will be built and opened has yet to be determined, but it will take at least five to eight years, according to the Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, because of the complexities that come with building such a specialized medical facility and no final price tag has been confirmed.
While the focus is on the new build, the foundation is also dedicated to continue funding the things they have in the past.
“We can’t leave any kids behind in the years that we’re building that hospital,” Faulkner said.
“We’ll still fund equipment, programming, just like we always have, and research, which really attracts the best and brightest and ensures we have the most innovative care here.”
In the meantime, those in charge are dreaming big.
“A children’s hospital has such a different feel to it when we walk in the door,” said Christine Westerlund, senior operating officer at the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
“It comes across very purpose-built to reduce some of that atmosphere of feeling scary, to actually welcome kids and to not expose them or traumatize kids or families to really adult situations.”
Westerlund said the new hospital will have more outdoor space and more amenities for patients, but the focus will be on families.
“We need to have excellence in clinical care, that’s a given. We need to make sure we have a research and an academic focus and that’s given. But what we really need to lean into is the opportunity to have patient and family centered care in what we’re delivering.”
She said the standalone facility will also make it easier for the Stollery to attract top talent.
“It’ll allow the teams to actually be collaborative in their approach when we think of how we approach research, clinical care, team building, family-centered care,” she said. “We can do the wraparound if we have space that actually fosters that to occur on site and in the care area.”
“A new children’s hospital will allow us to actually build the infrastructure to support the care team to provide their excellence in care.”
The provincial government began this process in 2021 with an initial $1 million, matched by the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.
The 2024 provincial budget allocated $20 million over three years to advance plans for a stand-alone Stollery that would offer more beds, larger clinical spaces, more private rooms and dedicated areas for children and their families.
The province said last year’s provincial budget dedicated another $11 million over three years to further the planning and design work.
For more information about the No Bounds campaign, visit StolleryNoBounds.com.
— With files from Karen Bartko, Global News
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