Yukon Hospital Corp. will oversee the construction of a new hospital in Dawson City and run the facility once it is built.
This expansion of the hospital corporation’s reach was announced by the territory April 9.
Similar plans to give the hospital corporation control over health services in Watson Lake were greeted in December with protests by community health workers, who complained they had not been consulted about the move.
They also feared the hospital corporation would put undue focus on providing 24-hour acute care, rather than tending to alcohol and substance abuse problems.
A new health facility for Dawson was proposed in 2005, but the project was soon put on ice.
The 2009-10 budget includes $1 million to resume planning.
Dawson’s health facility was originally planned as an extended-care facility for the elderly. It’s now being called a hospital.
A similar switch occurred in Watson Lake last summer, midway through a new building’s construction, when the government found that renovating the existing cottage hospital would cost more than building a new facility.