Hospice Peterborough is planning to build a new $8 million 10-bed palliative care facility on London Street.
The design would include Langton House, a 100-year-old home on the site but a few months ago, the house was found to be structurally unsound. This meant construction was slowed until the house was demolished and plans revised, costs which were not in the original budget.
Thursday afternoon, Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal brought word the Ministry of Health would provide $2 million in capital funding to help complete the project.
“We are so grateful for the support from the Ministry of Health so that we can move forward quickly and not have to go back to our community for more support,” says Hospice Peterborough Executive Director Linda Sunderland.
Currently, there are only three palliative care beds in all of central eastern Ontario.
The new facility would increase that four-fold. Officials say a lack of ‘end-of-life care’ beds means that palliative care patients end up where ever space can be found, which is not good health care.
Leal’s brother Ted died recently and spent his last days in an emergency room bed.
“With my brother being in that ER bed, and all the resources necessary to keep him alive, perhaps it would have been better for someone who had the chance to live and not pass away and given the opportunity in the last weeks of my brother’s life, a hospice setting would have been much better, no question about that.”
The new Hospice Peterborough facility is expected to open in December 2018
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