Downtown Vancouver hospital move draws fire

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by zilfondel

Wow, even Portland has 3 major hospitals ringed around its downtown, which only has about 40-50,000 residents in those neighborhoods. Luckily, none of them are going to move...

The issue you guys face sounds a bit like what a smaller town in Oregon faced (Eugene) - a hospital in downtown wanted more land to expand, and ended up building in a flood plain. Interestingly, they kept open their old hospital - even though they said they'd close it, and a third hospital from another company was built. So a city of 150,000 ended up with 3 hospitals... 2 of them are about 5 miles from downtown on the very fringe.

They aren't planning to entirely close the old hospital, some hospital services will still be maintained and it'll likely remain as an Urgent Care Centre (large medical clinic for minor treatments and special operations) as well as an AIDS/HIV centre.

[SpongeG]

hospitals in the states are private though aren't they?

i am sure if we could have private run/owned hospitals in BC there would be a lot more

[vanhattan]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

hospitals in the states are private though aren't they?

i am sure if we could have private run/owned hospitals in BC there would be a lot more

You are correct in that nearly all hospitals in the USA are private, with one huge exception and that is the US Department of Veteran Affairs Hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, etc. There are also city run hospitals in some of the larger cities.