A record $75 million has been donated to the St. Paul’s Foundation to help build a new Vancouver hospital. The Jim Pattison Medical Centre, an 18-acre health campus, will be built near Main Street and Terminal Avenue in East Vancouver.
The donation from B.C. billionaire Jim Pattison is the largest donation by a private citizen to a medical facility in the history of the country.
“A gift of this magnitude will have an impact today, and for generations to come,” said Dr. Jeff Pike, physician and director of Clinical Planning for Providence Health Care’s Redevelopment Project. “Our patients’ care experience will be greatly improved, and they’ll be supported from hospital to community to home –receiving the right care, at the right time, at the right place.”
The new Jim Pattison Medical Centre will be a purpose-built, fully-integrated health campus, comprising the entire 18.4-acre site on Station Street in the False Creek Flats. Building on St. Paul’s global reputation for leadership and innovation in clinical care and research, the Jim Pattison Medical Centre will be a hub for services that reach across Vancouver and the province of BC.
“Jim Pattison has stepped forward to transform health care on a scale this country has never seen,” said Dick Vollet, President and CEO, St. Paul’s Foundation. “Jim Pattison’s gift will help us realize an exceptionally rare opportunity to build a major medical and research centre from the ground up, that will establish its place among the most highly regarded and recognized medical centres in North America.”
The Jim Pattison Medical Centre will include St. Paul’s Hospital with its associated acute-and-critical-care programs; the provincial Heart Centre, Centre for Heart Lung Innovation, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and other centres of excellence in health care and research; primary care and specialized outpatient clinics; the PHC Research Institute; research facilities; and life sciences industry partners.
The new Centre will lead the delivery of B.C.’s new model of health care by providing patients with the highest quality integrated, compassionate, patient-centred care. In planning the new Jim Pattison Medical Centre, St. Paul’s has the unique opportunity to begin a project of this magnitude from a blank canvas. This allows the freedom to design and develop a medical centre that is built from St. Paul’s philosophy of patients first. This will translate into a health campus that is specifically designed for unique and diverse patient populations to provide an improved patient care experience for all.
