In August of 2021, Premier Brian Pallister announced the plans for a new $283-million, two-storey hospital in Portage la Prairie, expected to be completed in 2025.

The new hospital will have at least 90 acute care inpatient beds, with increased day surgery capacity, an expanded emergency department and enhanced programs including diagnostics, dialysis, palliative care, and other outpatient services.

"The new Portage District General Hospital will be bigger and better, providing the community and the region with a modern facility and access to many services that previously may have required multiple trips to Winnipeg or Brandon,” Dale Lyle, board chair of the Portage Hospital Foundation, said in a news release.

The hospital will replace the current 88-bed Portage District General Hospital, which opened in 1956. The province said a study in 2019 found the site had deficiencies and would be more cost-effective to replace it than renovate it.

What was not included in the “bigger and better hospital”, and will still require multiple trips by patients of Central Plains, was the acquisition of a MRI unit. RHA, when asked why Portage is not being considered for a new MRI unit, gave no reasonable explanation, especially knowing that there are private Individuals prepared to pay for one. They gave answers that deflected from their tax paid responsibilities and contradictory to applicable policies regarding population census. Eg. Winkler and Dauphin have MRI units.

The taxpaying citizens of Portage la Prairie and Central Plains need to speak up and let it be known that there is no better time to acquire a new, privately funded, MRI unit than with a new build.

https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=52161&posted=2021-08-23