St. Paul’s Hospital: Looking to the future
It’s not just a plan to build a new St. Paul’s Hospital but a plan to build a better hospital. For the thousands of patients who show up in the hospital’s emergency room every year, the change is going to be profound.
The vast majority of ER patients are from the Downtown Eastside with mental health or addiction issues. In the next part of a series on St. Paul’s Hospital, Global Newslooks at the new plan to save them.
Dr. Bill MacEwan’s office is a park bench outside of the Community Courts on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Four days a week, the head of the Psychiatry Department at St. Paul’s Hospital tries to see as many patients as he can — all of them mentally ill, most of them addicted. He has several hundred patients and his goal every day is to help them before they need to be admitted to emergency at St. Paul’s Hospital.
Randene Neill reports.
