More beds, wider services planned at new Winnipeg medical boarding facility

Kivalliq residents travelling to Winnipeg for medical care will soon have access to a bigger, better boarding facility with amenities and where all services will be provided under one roof.

Sakku Investments Group purchased Clarion Hotel and Suites property on Portage Avenue in May and is planning a large-scale renovation to house medical patients and their families from the North.

It’s expected that by the end of September the new site will replace the Kivalliq Inuit Centre, which has been under lease for 20 years.

In recent years the number of patients has increased, at times requiring hotel rooms across the city to accommodate the overflow.

That was problematic, said David Kakuktinniq, president of Sakku Investments Corp. a business development arm of the Kivalliq Inuit Association.

The Kivalliq Inuit Centre has 44 rooms, with three beds to a room. Patients often bring family or caregivers with them, further straining the centre.

Kakuktinniq said it has been processing up to 200 patients and visitors per day, including family members and caregivers, or 70,000 bed nights each year.

Fifty per cent of patients had to be dispersed to other locations across the city, Kakuktinniq said. Services such as meals were provided offsite. Logistics for air travel were handled at another location.

It was “very onerous, causing lots of undo stress,” he said.

Staff tasked with scheduling medical appointments, travel arrangements and other services were forced to run all over city to meet obligations.

With the new facility, the “goal is to consolidate and provide a better level of service. [So staff] can focus on the critical elements of support,” Kakuktinniq said.

The new site, which operated as the Clarion Hotel and Suites, has 139 rooms for visitors.

It also provides space for meetings, conferences and banquets, commercial space and more than 40,000 square feet of office space, Kakuktinniq said.

There are restaurants onsite and others close by, plus a pool and green spaces.

Kakuktinniq said Sakku Investments has plans for renovations and conversion of existing space, but the group is taking a staggered approach to changes. He said there is a plan to provide a chapel and possibly other religious spaces.

Patients have already started using the new boarding centre but a full transition of staff, equipment and patients won’t be complete until September.

Existing hotel staff will be retained, with several thousand square feet of office space opened for the medical boarding facility’s administrative staff and caretakers.

Some commercial office space is already occupied by tenants offering medical services and Kakuktinniq said he would like to see more, such as dentists.

“The goal is to provide an enhanced level of service,” he said.

The group has worked with the Government of Nunavut over the past couple of years to bring an enhanced facility to fruition.

In an email, Nunavut Health Department spokesperson Nadine Purdy noted “the collaborate efforts” between Sakku and the Health Department to bring the plan to fruition.

“This is something we have been aspiring to for a long time. It is really the right match,” Kakuktinniq said.