One of the problems of doing a difficult job is that every knows how to do it better than you do - especially in retrospect.

Hindsight, especially among those who are of a critical bent anyway, is not just 20/20 - it's practically telescopic.

Change laboratory and X-ray staffing levels on the Northern Peninsula and you can get ready for a heap of hurt. Announce intentions to close unsprinklered personal-care homes - even though it's the right thing to do, a life and safety issue, and even though you've given homes financial assistance and months of lead-time to do the work - and you can count on crying seniors on the 5:30 news, and again at six o'clock. Columnists and editorial writers line you up like a football just waiting to be kicked through the goal posts, each and every time you look away and leave the opportunity.

So maybe it's fair to point out that governments can make reasonable, sensible, thoughtful decisions, too.

Monday, the provincial government announced plans for a new 460-bed long-term care facility to replace the Hoyles-Escasoni complex.

The new facility, slated to open in 2013, will focus on a more modern view of long-term care, attempting to move away from wards with many patients to single rooms and, to the best extent possible, a more home-like atmosphere. There's a lot to like in that concept.

As anyone would tell you, the staff at Hoyles-Escasoni do what they can, but the facility was designed for another age, and visiting a loved one in that environment can be close to heartbreaking - and not just because of the brutal toll of age and illness, either.

But it's more than just the idea of applying new ideas to the facility.

There's the idea of using an existing site that has environmental liability issues that would probably prevent it from being sold at a high price as green-field property, building a facility with lower energy costs and water needs, and focusing on everything from health to social concerns for residents.

At this point, there's a lot to like.

That's not to say that there aren't further improvements that can be made to the plan - there probably are. You have to wonder, for example, if the facility will be big enough to satisfy the needs of the province's rapidly aging population.

Demographics give governments some lead-time, but the burgeoning number of aging baby boomers is a wild card that isn't easy to get a handle on. Will fitness trends of the 1990s and later keep seniors in their own homes longer, or will growing obesity and diabetes rates mean a larger number of seniors needing care for blindness, amputations and heart disease? That remains to be seen.

What can be said is that Hoyles-Escasoni has been around for a long time, and has needed to be replaced for years. At least a government has decided to take that bull by the very expensive horns.