The Nova Scotia government will sell an unfinished hotel in Bedford to Shannex, who will take over renovations and construction on the province’s planned transitional care centre.

Shannex’s unsolicited plan for the facility will add a 110-room expansion, bringing the facility’s total to 178 rooms.

“Shannex has demonstrated experience in providing this level of care and also in those types of construction projects,” says Michelle Thompson, minister of health and wellness and member of the legislative assembly for Antigonish.

“It will get patients the care they need faster and more conveniently and help reduce emergency department crowding.”

Thompson, along with Shannex President Jason Shannon, made the announcement Friday.

In February, Nova Scotia’s auditor general, Kim Adair, released a report that questioned why the government chose the unfinished Bedford hotel to convert into the transitional care facility.

Adair said the government may want to fast track health care improvements, but doing things quickly shouldn’t take precedence “over appropriate due diligence and value for money.”

The province originally purchased the hotel, located at 21 Hogan Court in West Bedford, to turn it into a transitional care facility for $34.5 million.

One of the issues Adair pointed out is that, when the province made the purchase, they relied on an appraisal report that assumed the property was complete. More information about the audit report is available online.

The government says Shannex will not own the building until construction is complete.

The rooms in the newly planned expansion will open in two years, the government says, which is sooner than the proposed transitional care facility in Bayers Lake. Because of that, the government says it will no longer use that site for transitional care but will use it for other health-care needs.

Transitional care

The centre will be the first of its kind in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada, says Thompson.

Although the province wants to build many more long-term care suites, Thompson says there are hundreds who don’t need that level of care. Transitional care is for people who need more support to safely return home, or people who don’t need acute car anymore, she says.

Other positive impacts of the facility, according to Thompson, include:

• ambulance offload times
• allowing patients to heal and recover in “the right setting”
• freeing up emergency room space
• getting patients help faster

Jason Shannon, president of Shannex, says the plan for the transitional care centre is a “real improvement” for Nova Scotia health care.

He says Shannex and Nova Scotia Health with collaborate to ensure patients get the help they need and the care they need to restore their abilities, whether that’s through mobilization, nutrition, socialization or other things.

Rooms will be 100 per cent private patient suites, he says.

Recruitment teams are already looking for people to staff these facilities, he says. Shannex plans to have “exceptionally high retention rates and job satisfaction from employees,” he says.