The County of Lambton is eyeing the complete redevelopment of Lambton Meadowview Villa in Petrolia -- starting with a 10-bed dementia house.
An application has been submitted to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, which provides construction funding subsidies on a per-bed-per-day basis to support the cost of developing or redeveloping eligible long-term care homes.
Lambton Long Term Care General Manager Jane Joris said the dementia house would be located in vacant space, that had been rented to a local doctor.
"That area was actually built to provide overnight respite for people with Alzheimer's disease," said Joris. "My understanding is that, at that time, there were no operating dollars available for that."
Joris estimates the project would cost about $4 million.
"County council hasn't approved this project. They've approved the theory of it, but we still have some work to do, because we don't have an operating plan. We've looked at the area, what kind of construction we would need, but we still have some work to do before we can decide if we would absolutely move ahead with this, and the other thing we'll have to see is how much the province will be able to provide for the project too."
If the funding application is approved, Joris said preliminary plans could be done in 2021 and construction of the dementia house could be completed in 2023.
"We know there's going to be more and more people living with dementia and we need to make sure they have good quality of life and if we keep doing things the same way, that's not always the best," said Joris. "We know there's other models of care and things that we can do to make things better, so I think we need to do that."
In the meantime, Joris said the 26-year-old home doesn't meet the newest design standards and they're looking to revamp it.
"When people were moving to long-term care 25-years-ago, they didn't have the same complexity of need that they have now and so, there are some things about that building that would help us provide better care if it was updated. It's also got old systems, old elevators, we'll either have to spend a lot of money on capital to fix it up, or build a new home."
Lambton Meadowview Villa provides 24-hour nursing and personal care, and has 125 beds, 63 private and 31 semi-private rooms.