Alberta's newest and largest hospital

Posted September 6, 2012

The biggest hospital in Alberta’s history is beginning to open, with diagnostic imaging and family clinics now treating patients.

Premier Alison Redford, Health Minister Fred Horne, and University of Calgary President Elizabeth Cannon were joined by their colleagues and the media at the South Health Campus (SHC) today, for the opening of the first phase of the South Health Campus. Other services at the South Health Campus will be phased in over the coming months. The emergency department will open in early 2013.

“These are the first of many milestones that will be celebrated here at the South Health Campus,” said Premier Alison Redford. “The South Health Campus is already enhancing the health care system in Calgary and southern Alberta by providing new capacity to diagnostic imaging and, access to family doctors.”

In a joint initiative between Alberta Health Services and the University of Calgary, with funding from the Government of Alberta, the new teaching clinic will provide Calgarians access to nine family doctors and have capacity to take on 4,000 new patients.

The South Health Campus Family Medicine Teaching Centre is the third teaching clinic operated in the city by the University of Calgary with Alberta Health Services. Two other teaching clinics are located downtown at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre, and at the Sunridge location in the northeast (near the Peter Lougheed Centre). The clinics are staffed by numerous family doctors and act as a teaching tool for family medicine “residents” (recently graduated physicians training in family medicine).

Our teaching sites offer Calgarians access to family doctors who provide comprehensive primary care,” said Elizabeth Cannon, President of the University of Calgary. “Along the way, patients have the opportunity to help train future doctors by allowing family medicine residents, supervised by fully qualified doctors, to participate in their care.”