B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix announced Wednesday that a new 300-bed long term care facility will be built on the grounds of Langley Memorial Hospital, although the building won't open for six years.
Dix, flanked by local MLAs, the heads of Fraser Health and the Langley Community Health and Hospital Foundation (LCHHF), and a seniors care advocate, said it is a response to the fast-rising local population, and the even faster-growing number of seniors in the Langley area.
"They are not the sole long term care beds that we need, but it's a pretty good start," Dix said.
Asked about the cost and timelines, Dix said that the next step was to get the business plan for the new facility approved, likely in the next few months, and then work with the LCHHF on buying more land around Langley Memorial for the facility.
The cost of long-term care beds has averaged between $800,000 and $1.5 million per bed in recent projects, Dix said.
That would put the cost at between $240 million and $450 million for the new facility.
The opening date is expected to be 2030, and the new facility will increase the number of long-term care centres in Langley to five.
As far as staffing, Dix said that B.C. has added 8,000 new health care assistants over the last few years, 7,000 of them in long-term care settings, and that 6,000 nurses were added to B.C.'s rolls last year.
He acknowledged that demand for nurses in particular, however, is "extraordinary" and that more will be needed via expanded nursing training and bringing in nurses from other jurisdictions.
LCHHF executive director Heather Scott noted that Langley is the fastest-growing community in B.C. by rate of growth, and also has 37 per cent of residents who are seniors.
"Langley seniors have helped build our community," Scott said. She said the LCHHF will help support this new investment in seniors care any way it can.
Leslie Gaudette, president of the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C. (COSCO) spoke at the announcement, noting that her mother and grandmother were both residents of Langley Lodge, one of Langley's oldest long-term care homes.
"My grandmother was one of the earliest residents," Gaudette said.
The new facility is expected to be sharply different from facilities built 50 years or more ago.
Dix noted that most older long-term care residences have rooms with between two and five beds.
The focus for the new facilities being built now are to have more one-bedroom units, which is better both for resident privacy and for situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aly Devji, CEO of the Langley Care Society which operates Langley Lodge, welcomed the increased capacity within the community, but noted that demographics will require much more investment in seniors in the coming years.
“While the Ministry reassesses the hospital expansion scope, we are ready to get on with serving more generations of Langley families over the next 50 years,” said Devji. “We welcome the ministry’s announcement but acknowledge it will not meet current or future demand for high quality seniors care in Langley over the next 10 to 20 years. Given our history within the community, we hope that the health ministry and FHA give us a chance to help meet this demand and expand to other Langley locations.”
As of 2023, Langley was home to 34,500 seniors lived in Langley – a 57 per cent increase since 2014, he noted. The region-wide increase was 53 per cent. Like the rest of Canada, Langley’s population of seniors is expected to grow at an even faster rate over the next 20 years.
Langley Care Society has been operating the 139-bed Langley Lodge long-term seniors home since 1974.
