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CONSTRUCTION AND DELIVERY UPDATE – FEBRUARY 2025

Health Hub Project leaders welcome final stage of construction.

 

Leaders of the working group behind the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub initiative welcomed the builder’s notice of final stage of construction. The last visible work underway is the completion of the exterior façade’s aluminum panelling. Interior spaces will shortly be delivered to the future occupants for them to complete their office configurations.

Roadways and parking are levelled and packed, ready for asphalting as soon as the weather warms.

A better exterior finish view is available from the side of the structure, highlighting the glassed corners, light grey stonework and modern architectural panelling. A current, yet timeless professional design fit for the purpose of of its occupants.

The structure is well visible from the main thoroughfares that make Carleton Place a central destination for West Regional Ottawa, underlining its role as a comprehensive health services destination for the region.

 

 

 

 

 

Carleton Place Regional Health Hub LP 210-720 Belfast Road, Ottawa ON K1G 0Z5

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Construction Update – April – May 2024

During April work was concentrated on assembling the steel structure, which was completed by end of the month. The floors are corrugated steel, which will receive a layer of concrete.
In the images, you will also note drainage and sewage piping lines being completed around the building.

At end of May, concrete pumping equipment was in place to pour the floor slabs, which was caught on the video posted here.

It’s been smiles all around from the future tenants at seeing the true scale and scope of their future home.

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Construction Update Feb-Mar 2024

Favorable weather allowed an accelerated completion of the backfill solidifying the foundation base. The steel structure parts arrived early March, including columns, beams, and girders. Assembly started immediately, and by mid-March, half of the building’s skeleton was easily recognizable.

 

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Construction Updates

November 2023

Initial land clearing and site preparation leave the building’s imprint clearly identifiable as it is dug out for foundation work. Foundation footing molds are then carefully placed within the  imprint. In the overhead image, the lone figure of Peter Hamer, CEO of the Ottawa Valley Health Team provides scale and perspective of the building’s floorplate standing in the area of the entrance lobby.

 

 

December 2023

With relatively cooperative weather, footings are set and poured.  With the footprint of the building’s foundation set, forms are installed to pour foundation walls.

 

January 2024

Winter conditions finally hit, but does little to hamper progress as foundation walls are poured with great care and heightened protective measures. Tons of gravel are slowly and carefully placed to solidify the building foundation’s base.

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Carleton Place Regional Health Hub breaks ground to help community solve family doctor shortage

The Health Hub will create one destination for the community’s primary care needs and is already helping the region recruit family physicians to support 5,000 people without a primary care provider.

November 14, 2023 – Shovels are in the ground on schedule to construct the new Carleton Place Regional Health Hub that will bring together anchor tenants – the local family physicians, Ottawa Valley Family Health Team, and a pharmacy – to centralize and expand primary care in support of recruiting much-needed family physicians to the area.

The Ottawa Valley Family Health Team (OVFHT) received Ministry of Health approval and provincial and municipal funding to enhance primary care in the region by expanding its Mississippi Mills catchment to include Carleton Place and Beckwith. The OVFHT has partnered with M+H Properties Group to lead the development of the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub. The Health Hub supports team-based care by centralizing all local family physicians into one medical clinic with the added support of Ottawa Valley Family Health Team’s specialized programming (e.g., COPD and Asthma Program, Memory Clinic, Adolescent and Child Mental Health Program) and complementary, third-party healthcare services (e.g., pharmacy, diagnostics).

M+H Properties is co-developing the building with Gallivan Development. Phase 1 of the Health Hub, located on Costello Drive in Carleton Place, is slated to open in fall 2024.

The OVFHT expansion plans have been in motion since the Ministry of Health approval, focusing on growing the OVFHT catchment from 15,000 residents in Mississippi Mills to more than 36,000 in Beckwith, Carleton Place, and Mississippi Mills. Additionally, the OVFHT aims to attract at least five new family physicians in the first five years of the Health Hub’s operation to support the projected 12,000 unattached patients in the region with the anticipated rapid population growth. The Health Hub’s team- based model positions the community to increase from 15 to 20 family physicians, serving approximately 5,000 additional patients who currently do not have a family physician.

“We are seeing the ripple effect of Ontario’s family doctor shortage in our emergency departments with an increasing number of individuals seeking care for non-emergency health concerns because they do not have another option,” explains Peter Hamer, CEO, OVFHT. “This gap in care is costly and unsustainable for the health system and lacks convenience and continuity of care for patients. It’s a key reason why we are developing the Health Hub. Through the Health Hub’s team-based model, we have already begun attracting new family physicians to give more community members access to appropriate, timely care. We are thrilled the Health Hub construction is moving forward on schedule, so we have the essential healthcare infrastructure to keep pace with the influx of families moving into the area.”

The OVFHT has had early recruitment success thanks to the confirmation of the Health Hub. Dr. Bita Safaie, a new family physician, recently moved to the community with the promise of joining the Health Hub’s medical clinic and is taking on 1,000 patients without a family physician. With this recruitment, 15 family physicians now support the Carleton Place and Beckwith communities.

Dr. Safaie shares: “I’ve always wanted to practice family medicine in a small town and Carleton Place is a perfect fit for me. I love providing comprehensive primary care to my patients in the community as well as being able to care for them in the hospital if required. The continuity of care between home and hospital is what makes this so special. The expansion of the Ottawa Valley Family Health Team into Carleton Place is also very exciting. My patients will soon be able to access more health care resources in this team-based model.”

Breaking ground for the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub

Toby Randell, Mayor, Town of Carleton Place, says: “Carleton Place is extremely pleased that the lease signing with our local doctors’ group and M+H Properties has been finalized. This important milestone will be just one of many that will come over the next 18 months, culminating in the vision we all started with, which was providing world-class healthcare services to our residents while attracting new family doctors to work together in a central hub. The commitment of a new family doctor, even before a groundbreaking, will, I’m sure, be just the first of many who will see the benefit and want to be a part of this collaborative vision. The town thanks the doctors’ group, M+H Properties, and the Ottawa Valley Family Health Team for working diligently towards this first step in what I know will continue to be a productive relationship over the years.”

“This is another step towards the vision of creating a family health team model for the delivery of health care services a reality in the Beckwith and Carleton Place area,” shares Richard Kidd, Reeve, Township of Beckwith. “I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the doctors and team on this achievement.”

The Health Hub’s Phase 1 building will have a footprint of nearly 15,000 square feet and will rise four floors to allow for 60,000 square feet of occupancy space, with ample parking on-site and barrier-free access to the facilities. Along with the confirmed tenants, the local physician group, OVFHT, and a pharmacy, other Health Hub tenants will include interprofessional health providers integral to primary care, such as diagnostics. The Carleton Place Health Hub allows interprofessional health providers to be located in the same building, helping provide ease of contact, continuity, and coordination of patient care.

Brad McDonald, M+H Properties Group, shares: “We are pleased to confirm to the communities of Carleton Place, the Township of Beckwith, and the Ottawa West Four Rivers Ontario Health Team region, that the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub development is moving according to plan and on schedule. This complex project unites and merges the goals and needs of multiple participants from both the public and private sectors and groups and individuals. To the credit of all involved, particularly the Carleton Place Planning Team, cooperation and collaboration levels are high, allowing us to move swiftly and efficiently towards delivering this unique facility.”

Tom Gallivan, Gallivan Developments, says: “A great amount of time and effort goes into a new building’s planning before any physical construction work can actually begin. As we confirm we are moving forward according to schedule, at this stage it means that final construction planning and approvals have been completed, and you will be seeing construction equipment on-site during this November month. Earth movers will be on-site first, and you can expect to see foundations and then steel structures take shape over the winter months. That’s cold, hard work in winter conditions, but we are working a rapid construction schedule, and barring unforeseen circumstances, we plan to deliver a completed building by next fall.”

The OVFHT expansion is supported by approximately $1.2 million in new annual funding from the provincial government to support the primary care expansion and more than $1.5 million in funding over ten years from the Township of Beckwith and the Town of Carleton Place.

The OVFHT does not have a waiting list for new patients at the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub or its Almonte location. The team cannot accommodate waiting list requests at this time.

Quick Facts:

  • Based on 2019 population projections adopted by Lanark County, Carleton Place is projected to grow by 97% over the next 20 years. The recent Ministry of Finance report also projects that Lanark County residents aged 65+ will increase by 72% between 2020 and 2046, adding pressure to local healthcare services.
  • All 15 local family physicians from the Beckwith Family Health Organization and the Carleton Place Family Health Organization will join the OVFHT team and run their practices at the Health Hub with the enhanced support of OVFHT’s satellite programs.
  • The Health Hub will also include independent, interdisciplinary healthcare services (e.g., pharmacy, lab services)
  • The OVFHT is based out of its Almonte location and will add a second location with the development of the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub.
  • The OVFHT will offer its programming to Carleton Place and Beckwith residents at its Carleton Place Regional Health Hub. Multiple healthcare providers support each program (e.g., nurse practitioners, registered nurses, respiratory therapists, registered dietitians, etc.). The proposed programs include:

o Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program o Diabetes and Obesity Program
o Frail Elderly and Dementia Program
o Mental Health Programming

o COPD and Asthma Program o Smoking Cessation Program o Hypertension Program
o Memory Clinic

• The Family Physician Clinic and Family Health Team operation will occupy one and a half floors of the four-storey building. The ground floor will be home to other health providers such as diagnostic imaging, physiotherapy, massage therapy, optical, podiatry, audiology, and a pharmacy. The Health Hub welcomes leasing inquiries from all disciplines.

 

Media contact:  Melissa McDermott melissa@melissamcdermott.ca

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March 2, 23 – Media Release

Ottawa Valley Family Health Team helps solve high demand for primary care by developing Carleton Place Regional Health Hub

The expansion will improve Carleton Place and Beckwith residents’ access to family physicians, disease management and prevention programs, and support physician recruitment.

 

March 2, 2023 – The Ottawa Valley Family Health Team (OVFHT) has received Ministry of Health approval and provincial and municipal funding to enhance primary care in the region by expanding its Mississippi Mills catchment to include Carleton Place and Beckwith. The OVFHT has partnered with M+H Properties Group to develop the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub by fall 2024 to support the expansion plan.

Five family physician clinics currently support Carleton Place and Beckwith residents; however, paGents cannot access family health team interdisciplinary services. The new Carleton Place Regional Health Hub will bring the 14 local family physicians under one roof and offer Beckwith and Carleton Place residents access to OVFHT’s specialized programming (e.g., COPD and Asthma Program, Memory Clinic, Adolescent and Child Mental Health Program) and other inter-professional healthcare services (e.g., pharmacy).

John Jordan, MPP, Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, said: “Generous provincial funding has enabled the Ottawa Valley Family Health Team to expand their interdisciplinary team to provide services to the residents of Mississippi Mills, Carleton Place, Beckwith, and beyond. The presence of a strong interdisciplinary team will greatly assist local physicians to meet their demanding service levels, and it will enhance the recruitment of new physicians to this rapidly growing community.”

The OVFHT expansion is supported by approximately $1.2 million in new annual funding from the provincial government to support primary care expansion; and a combined $1.7 million in funding over ten years from the Township of Beckwith and the Town of Carleton Place.

“Under the leadership of Premier Ford, the Ontario government is delivering on our promise to provide more convenient and connected care, closer to home,” said Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “With this investment, I look forward to seeing how the Ottawa Valley Family Health Team is able to provide care to more Ontarians in their region through the new clinic in Carleton Place.”

Toby Randell, Mayor, Town of Carleton Place, shared: “Council recognizes the benefit of investing in the future healthcare needs of our residents to ensure that we have the opportunity to attract both doctors and ancillary healthcare amenities not currently available locally. We were proud to collaborate with OVFHT, M+H Properties Group, and a large group of local doctors willing to make significant investments in our community to ensure the long-term health care of our residents. Council is looking forward to the day when our collaborative efforts, hard work, and dedication with these partners over the past 18 months see the creation of the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub, which will provide a solid foundation of health care in our region for all our citizens in the future.”

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Peter Hamer, Executive Director of the OVFHT, for all his hard work and dedication in expanding the family health team to Beckwith and Carleton Place,” said Richard Kidd, Reeve, Township of Beckwith. “This service will improve our residents’ ability to navigate the health system. I would also like to thank John Jordan for his help in securing the funds provincially. “

The OVFHT currently supports the Mississippi Mills community of nearly 15,000 residents, and this expansion will grow its catchment to more than 36,000 residents.

“There has been a long-standing primary care inequity in this region,” said Peter Hamer, Executive Director, OVFHT. “We are pleased to have the approval and funding to meet the pressing need for additional, enhanced primary care services in Carleton Place and Beckwith. I am excited to work with the local physicians to build team-based care that will transform health care in this community by attracting new physicians, reducing unnecessary pressure on the hospital system, and improving overall health outcomes.”

The Ontario Ministry of Finance projects that Lanark County (including Mississippi Mills, Carleton Place, and Beckwith) will grow by 31.7% between 2020 and 2046. Specifically, the recent Ministry of Finance report projects that Lanark County residents aged 65+ will increase by 72% between 2020 and 2046, adding pressure to local healthcare services.

Karen Simpson, Beckwith community member and Executive Director of the Arnprior and District Family Health Team, shared: “Beckwith and Carleton Place residents have missed out on access to interdisciplinary team services available through a family health team. Under Peter Hamer and the Ottawa Valley FHT’s leadership, we can now make this vision of team-based care a reality for our community that will have the added benefit of improving our ability to attract and retain family physicians.”

Dr. Émilie Meyers, one of the project’s physician leads, said: “As a new physician, I struggled with the decision to come to Carleton Place because I was concerned about running my own practice. Ultimately, I am grateful I joined an excellent community of doctors, allied health professionals, and patients.

However, primary care has been under immense pressure province wide. The new Carleton Place Regional Health Hub will be a great way to provide centralized, enhanced primary care services beyond simply visiting your family doctor—and it is the best way for the Carleton Place medical community to keep pace with the town’s growth.”

This expansion brings together three family health organizations (Beckwith, Carleton Place, and Almonte), who, along with the OVFHT, have established effective collaboration as Ottawa West Four Rivers Ontario Health Team (OWFR OHT) partners.

“Primary care plays a valuable and critical role in OHTs, and we are proud to work with primary care partners looking for opportunities to improve patient access to connected care in their local communities,” said Chris LeBouthillier, Co-Chair, OWFR OHT, and Co-Lead of the OHT’s Primary Care Engagement Committee. “We are hopeful that with collaborative initiatives like this, we can continue to strengthen local primary care participation and leadership in the OWFR OHT to improve patients’ and providers’ experiences within our healthcare and community support systems.”

The Carleton Place Regional Health Hub will be built on Costello Drive in Carleton Place and offer approximately 40,000 square feet of space on a 15,000 square feet footprint. Led by M+H Properties Group, construction will begin in fall 2023.

Brad McDonald, Managing Partner at M+H Properties Group, said: “We are pleased and proud to help create this community-transforming opportunity for the Town of Carleton Place and the Township of Beckwith. We have particularly strong ties to the region as two of the three M+H partners reside in the region, and we were impressed to find such dedicated and focused co-creators in this project, including municipal representatives and the leadership of the primary health care provider groups. The region is certainly well served in that respect, and it bodes well for the community that their leaders are responding so actively and thoughoully to the challenges of optimizing their future primary healthcare services. We look forward to supporting those goals with shovels in the ground before the end of 2023!”

The OVFHT does not have a waiting list for the Carleton Place Regional Health Hub or its Almonte location. The team cannot accommodate waiting list requests at this time.

 

Media contact:   Melissa McDermott   melissa@melissamcdermott.ca

in Update Posted by Developer

Sept 10, 23 – Inside Ottawa Valley

Family health team expansion in the works for Carleton Place

Significant need and value for the Carleton Place and Beckwith communities

By Tara Gesner Carleton Place Almonte Canadian Gazette Saturday, September 10, 2022

Beckwith local Karen Simpson feels strongly that Carleton Place needs a family health team to serve Beckwith and Carleton Place residents.

“I see the benefits of a family health team through my work in Arnprior,” she told Carleton Place council on Aug. 23.

Simpson is the executive director of the Arnprior and District Family Health Team and is aiding Ottawa Valley Family Health Team (OVFHT) executive director Peter Hamer to bring a family health team to Carleton Place.

“Not having a family health team in Carleton Place makes it much more difcult to recruit physicians,” Simpson said. “Family physicians look for team-based care these days.

“Carleton Place and Beckwith are growing significantly, looking at projections, so we know we will need more physicians,” she added.

A family health team is a community-centred primary care organization whose programs and services are geared to the population groups it serves. Located in Almonte, the OVFHT is funded by the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC).

According to Hamer, the MOHLTC has a significant interest in expanding the teams, but almost none in creating new ones. Hence, an application is before the Ministry of Health, submitted in May 2022, for the extension of the OVFHT.

The proposal looks at additional nurse practitioners, registered nurses, registered practical nurses, mental health workers, dietitians, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and psychologists. They offer a myriad of programs and services — from individual ones provided to patients but also those aimed at health prevention to management of chronic illness (diabetes, obesity, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, frailty in older adults, hypertension, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and more).

“We want to bring these allied health-care professionals and resources into Carleton Place,” Hamer noted. “It is both a signicant need and value for the Carleton Place and Beckwith communities.”

He explained: “If you are a patient of a doctor in Carleton Place and need to see a psychotherapist, dietician, diabetic educator, etc., you pay for these programs and services if you do not have benefits. However, you do not pay if you have a family health team that supports your doctor.”

In Almonte, the OVFHT is co-located with the municipality’s doctors but physicians are not participants in the team.

Carleton Place physicians voted unanimously to support the extension of the OVFHT, recognizing it as a retention and recruitment strategy.

“This was a key component,” Hamer stressed. “We needed to have the physicians buy into it.”

Another critical piece to making this successful is nding a location — creating a space to co-locate the physicians with the family health team.

“Across the province, it is the model that works the best,” Hamer indicated.

Currently, there are five offices in Carleton Place and Beckwith that house the family physicians.

“We are working hard with some developers and the family health team resources to bring everybody under one roof,” Hamer stated. “This is what new graduates want.”

The ministry has recommended the OVFHT form a working group that involves members (individuals, politicians, etc.) from the two municipalities. Lanark-Frontenac- Kingston MPP John Jordan has already agreed to participate as well as representatives from Beckwith and the health-care sector.

“Carleton Place council’s support means everything because it is by working together that we will move this forward and get it funded,” Simpson said.

With the upcoming municipal election, Mayor Doug Black commented: “No matter who is elected, I am sure you would get support for this initiative. It is long overdue.”

“Carleton Place is a lovely town with a really good hospital and some really dedicated health-care professionals who want to do good things for the community,” Hamer pointed out.

Simpson and Hamer also met with Beckwith council earlier this summer.

The OVFHT executive director is confident ministry approval will come by the end of this calendar year or fiscal year (March 2023).

“Fingers-crossed it goes through, but I do not have any doubts,” Hamer expressed.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: With a family health team facility in the works for Carleton Place, reporter Tara Gesner wanted to find out what it means for the residents of Carleton Place and Beckwith. Tara Gesner is a reporter with the Carleton Place-Almonte Canadian Gazette. She can be reached at tgesner@metroland.com . Follow the Canadian Gazette on Twitter and Facebook.

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