WELLINGTON COUNTY – The team behind the planned rural hospice site in Wellington County feels well positioned to take advantage of the province’s recent announcement of putting more money towards building new hospice beds.
On Tuesday, the Ontario government announced it was opening up an application process for funding to build up to 84 new adult hospice beds as part of the 2024 budget of $19.75 million in capital funding.
That’s good news for Dr. Sarah Gower, who is with a group of Wellington County healthcare professionals and residents planning and fundraising to build the Aboyne Rural Hospice site.
The site will have 10 beds on a two-acre piece of land at Wellington Place near Groves Memorial Community Hospital donated by the County of Wellington in 2022.
The even better news, according to Gower, is the Aboyne site is well on track to make a strong application for funding.
“We’ve been preparing, knowing the types they’d be looking for in terms of land under control, we’re incorporated, we’ve got our charitable donation status, we’ve been raising the money that will be expected for us to move forward with the application and of course all the partnerships,” Gower said. “We’re very optimistic that we’re in excellent shape for this.”
Gower said the group has been aware this was coming for months having prepared an application in the springtime that was put on hold in anticipation for this announcement.
The group has even surpassed its initial $2.5 million fundraising goal in terms of donations and pledges, which demonstrates to the ministry a facility is feasible from a community support standpoint.
Although in Gower’s view Aboyne Rural Hospice ticks all the boxes the province is looking for, she noted some existing facilities may apply to expand although they would also have needed to be prepared ahead of time because the application closes in under a month.
“We know that the numbers are there in terms of our community needs with an aging population and an increasing population size overall,” Gower said. “(There’s) an overall increase in need for hospice beds in the region, we’re really well positioned to be a strong competitor for these beds.”
Part of the eligibility requirement would be for a new facility to open by March 31, 2027, which Gower said the Aboyne Rural Hospice site can do.
“We’re really quite ready to go, we’ve had plans and architects involved, engineers are involved. On the clinical side we’re planning for how we would staff it,” Gower said. “I think that’s a very realistic timeline for us.”
