Province Pledges Funds for a 192-bed long term care facility
Posted Aug 29, 2011 05:16:45 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Ontario government has pledged $20-million in capital funds and $625,000 a year in operating funds for a research centre focused on seniors at the University of Waterloo.
To be situated on Waterloo’s north campus, it will be built in three phases, beginning with a 192 bed long-term care home operated by Schlegel Villages. Faculty, staff and students from the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College will make up the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging and work there as part of a living-lab.
The next two phases will focus on assisted and independent living for seniors and a primary care health centre. The total construction will cost around $130-million.
Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Leeanna Pendergast says she was inspired to focus on this project by her husband, a physician, “the idea that we have to prevent people from going to hospital, we have to give them alternatives to hospital and we have to move them out of hospital in to long-term care beds when we can”.
Pendergast adds that all the members of the partnership share the same goal of being better prepared for a rapidly increasing senior population, “we all know the baby-boomer wave is moving to retirement and this is something that we really need to be prepared with both capacity and better expertise”.
