300-Bed Long-Term Care Facility Announced for Langley

BC Health Minister Adrian Dix announced Wednesday that a new 300-bed long-term care facility will be built on the grounds of Langley Memorial Hospital, although the building won’t open for six years.

Dix, flanked by local MLAs, the heads of Fraser Health and the Langley Community Health & Hospital Foundation (LCHHF) and a seniors care advocate, said it is a response to the fast-rising local population, and the even faster-growing number of seniors in the Langley area.

“They are not the sole long-term care beds that we need, but it’s a pretty good start,” Dix said.

Asked about the cost and timelines, Dix said that the next step was to get the business plan for the new facility approved, likely in the next few months, and then work with LCHHF on buying more land around Langley Memorial for the facility.

The cost of long-term care beds has averaged between $800,000 and $1.5 million per bed in recent projects, Dix said.

That would put the cost at between $240 million and $450 million for the new facility.

The opening date is expected to be 2030, and the new facility will increase the number of long-term care centres in Langley to five.

As far as staffing, Dix said that BC has added 8,000 new health care assistants over the last few years, 7,000 of them in long-term care settings, and that 6,000 nurses were added to BC’s rolls last year.

He acknowledged that demand for nurses in particular, however, is “extraordinary” and that more will be needed via expanded nursing training and bringing in nurses from other jurisdictions.

LCHHF Executive Director Heather Scott noted that Langley is the fastest-growing community in BC by rate of growth, and also has 37 per cent of residents who are seniors.

“Langley seniors have helped build our community,” Scott said. She said LCHHF will help support this new investment in seniors care any way it can.

Leslie Gaudette, president of the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of BC (COSCO) spoke at the announcement, noting that her mother and grandmother were both residents of Langley Lodge, one of Langley’s oldest long-term care homes.

“My grandmother was one of the earliest residents,” Gaudette said.

The new facility is expected to be sharply different from facilities built 50 years or more ago.

Dix noted that most older long-term care residences have rooms with between two and five beds.

The focus for the new facilities being built now are to have more one-bedroom units, which is better both for resident privacy and for situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

This piece was written by Matthew Claxton and originally published by the Langley Advance Times.