Capital Campaign: Emergency Department (ED) Revitalization Campaign

We are embarking on our largest fundraising effort to date with the ambitious goal of renovating Canmore General Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED). This project will cost $4.4 million dollars. While we have been fortunate to secure $2.2 million dollars in funding from the Provincial Government, we cannot reach the finish line without investments from our community.

The CAHCF’s mission is to elevate our community’s health care. Each of us has been impacted by Canmore hospital, either directly or indirectly, and we want to ensure that our friends, family, and neighbours continue receiving the highest quality of care right here in the Bow Valley. Many people living in or having visited Canmore, have had a reason to visit the emergency department at Canmore General Hospital. In the last year alone, there were 14,788 emergency room visits. That is an average of more than 40 visits every day.

Having a state-of-the-art emergency department in the Bow Valley is essential as we are an extremely active, car- ing, and growing community. We hope you see the benefits of this project and can join us in this significant fund- raising effort. Community is at the heart of everything we do. Our upcoming project is substantial in both size and impact, but we are confident we can reach our goal with your help.

“As a Charge nurse within the emergency department, I am beyond thrilled to hear that we will start renovating our very dated department. We have outgrown our current space and desperately need more treatment spaces for patients as we find our department getting significantly busier.”
— Member of the Canmore Hospital Team, Brett Oud

Staff and patients have identified current challenges:

  • Lack of patient privacy

  • No functional area for triaging patients

  • Difficult to accommodate contemporary

    equipment and technology

  • Inadequate workspaces for doctors and nurses

  • Public spaces are not currently meeting needs

    of patient and families

The revitalization of the Emergency Department will occur in two phases with an estimated timeline of winter 2022 to spring 2024.

Phase 1: At a total cost of $1.0 million dollars this phase will include construction of:

  • New medication room

  • New Family room

  • New Public washroom

  • Relocation of the existing waiting area

  • Development of Phase 2 architectural renderings

Phase 2: All the remaining ED upgrades at a cost of $3.4 million and will begin in April 2023.

“We’re very lucky to have the public health care system that we have, but there are certain things that individual communities would benefit from that the government won’t support or can’t support,”
-Dr. Mike Wickham, Emergency Department Lead, Canmore General Hospital

“Our patients deserve better than having to tell us their very private health concerns - such as a possible miscarriage - in a triage area where their conversation can be overheard by other staff and patients. A lot of patients come into the department in a wheelchair - which does not fit into the triage area, nor the bathroom.” - Kirstin Bartsch, a Registered Nurse at Canmore Hospital