A major piece of Metro Vancouver's hospital capacity has reached its full height. The acute care tower under construction at Richmond Hospital has officially topped out, Richmond News reported Tuesday, with the final structural beam hoisted into place on the roughly $2-billion redevelopment.
The tower is the centrepiece of the hospital's expansion. When it opens, it will house a new emergency department, additional operating rooms, expanded maternity and neonatal care, and added intensive care capacity for a city whose population — and whose hospital demand — has grown far beyond what the existing campus was built for.
Topping out is a milestone, not an opening date: fit-out, equipment installation and commissioning still lie ahead before the first patient is treated in the new tower. But for Richmond residents, who have watched the project rise beside the current hospital, the completed structure makes the long-promised capacity tangible.
The project also lands in a province-wide argument about whether British Columbia is building hospital capacity fast enough to match population growth. For the Vancouver region's health planners, every bed in the Richmond tower counts against emergency departments that routinely run over capacity across the Lower Mainland.
