Need for Investment

A number of key issues demonstrate the urgent need for the creation of additional capacity for the Surrey community:

Population and demographic issues

Fraser Health is the largest health authority in British Columbia, serving 35 percent of the province’s population. Between 2007 and 2020, Fraser Health’s population is expected to grow by 27 percent to nearly 1.9 million people, resulting in Fraser Health serving an even greater percentage of British Columbia’s population. The Surrey Local Health Area (“LHA”) has the largest population of all the communities served by Fraser Health and it is projected to grow at the fastest rate of any of the LHAs within the Authority.  SMH was originally built in 1959 when the population of Surrey was around 50,000.  Since then there has been rapid population growth in Surrey, with the city’s population at approximately 474,000 and growing by 9,000 people per year. In addition to the massive population growth within Surrey, the demography of the Surrey community presents further challenges when compared to other LHAs.

Infrastructure constraints

Surrey Memorial Hospital was built in several stages and different parts of the facility range in age from five to 46 years old. The older parts of the facility have numerous deficiencies, including a shortage of clinical space, clinical support space and non-clinical support space, a lack of storage space for supplies and equipment, undersized program areas compared to current standards and inefficient functional departmental layouts.  For example, the emergency department was originally built to handle 44,000 visits annually, but it currently handles 90,000 visits annually and is expected to reach 100,000 by 2020.

Additional expansion to the existing structure will alleviate some issues, but will not adequately address the urgent issues facing the community.

Service pressure points

Emergency Department, Neonatal Intensive Care, Inpatient Care and Critical Care, and Women’s and Children’s services are all impacted by the exponential population growth experienced and forecast to continue in Surrey.  Other service specific issues serve to further increase the pressure experienced by these services. 

Repatriation of health services

Population growth in the Fraser Health region combined with efforts to reduce people’s impact on the environment will put additional pressure on providing full health services closer to home. For example, children from the Fraser Health region represent the largest volumes for BC Children’s Hospital in inpatient and outpatient services, including surgery and clinic visits (with exception of Emergency).