Kneehill County broke ground on its new regional medical facility and administration offices Monday, November 3. The new clinic will be located next to the Three Hills hospital. Completion date for the building is expected to be spring 2016.
Kneehill County is turning another page in its history, breaking ground on a new medical facility and offices.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Monday, November 3 to make way for a new Regional Medical Clinic and Kneehill County Administration Building. The Medical Clinic is close to the hospital in Three Hills.
Kneehill Reeve Bob Long explains this is to consolidate its regional offices.
“There is a clinic in Trochu and a clinic in Three Hills, and both are jammed up, there is no additional room for staff. The way medical services are delivered today, a medical clinic is used for other professionals so we have no room for that,” Long explains. “So what we are doing is building a new clinic. It is next to the hospital.”
Connected to the building will be a new administration office for Kneehill County. This comes in its 70th year. The current county office on Main Street in Three Hills has been home since 1961.
“It is 60 years old and it is small, we are running out of room there as well,” said Long. “We created a building fund a few years ago and we had a needs assessment completed on our own requirements, and four years ago we were 25 per cent short of our capacity needed, manpower and space wise.”
“It was economies of scale for us to do the two buildings at once, and doing the two buildings on the same location.”
Of five bids received by the County, Shunda Consulting out of Red Deer came in with the lowest bid of $7,345,000.
Kneehill has been building a reputation for being a leader when it comes to rural health delivery. In 2011, the Kneehill County Recruitment and Retention Taskforce received the RPAP Alberta Rural Community Attraction and Retention Award. Long says the new facility could help attract new graduates looking for a place to begin practice.
“They are shopping around, so you have to remain current, relevant and a viable choice. We thought this could help,” said Long. “The other thing that is happening is medical practices are becoming a team effort, so having all the doctors in one building will have a spin-off effect.”
Groundwork began this fall and the County has set a completion date for spring 2016.
