London hospital set for $10M expansion, eyes 3,000 more surgeries annually
The province is giving London Health Sciences Centre $10 million to fund a surgical centre that will help the hospital complete 3,000 more procedures each year, including 500 more hip and knee replacements.
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The province is giving London Health Sciences Centre $10 million to expand its off-site surgical centre on Baseline Road, a project that will help the hospital complete 3,000 more procedures each year, including 500 more hip and knee replacements.
Labour Minister Monte McNaughton, the MPP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, announced the funding Friday.
“This will increase the amount of surgeries LHSC can do per year. It will reduce wait times and increase access to care. It’s a big capital project for the hospital,” McNaughton said, adding joint replacement surgery wait times have been a chronic concern for his constituents.
“I’ve been an MPP for 11 years and it’s been one of the biggest criticisms in the past of the health-care system, the backlog and wait times for hip and knee replacement surgeries. This will really go a long way.”
The multimillion-dollar cash injection will support LHSC’s existing surgi-centre, a 10,000-square-foot space on Baseline Road, across from Victoria Hospital, that was purpose-built for outpatient surgeries. The facility began seeing patients in early 2020, before the pandemic’s first wave.
The surgi-centre opened with two operating rooms, with plans for a third in a future expansion.
LHSC has already received the $10 million in funding for the centre, the hospital said in a statement.
Only healthy patients with routine surgical needs – such as knee scopes or other routine orthopedic procedures – are operated on at the Baseline Road facility.
The surgi-centre model is more efficient than running medically uncomplicated patients through a fully-loaded hospital operating room equipped to handle everything from emergency appendix removals to heart bypass surgeries.
Reducing the number of instruments on surgical trays and cutting the turnover time between patients from 23 minutes to nine minutes has decreased operating costs at the surgi-centre by 56 per cent.
LHSC also is getting $830,000 from the province’s surgical innovation fund, a provincial program launched last year to help hospitals perform more surgeries. LHSC is using the money to open multi-purpose operating room at Victoria Hospital to support child and youth surgeries and to buy joint surgery equipment, the hospital said in a statement.
“Our region is one of the fastest-growing areas in the province,” LHSC president and chief executive Jackie Schleifer Taylor said in a statement.
“These funds allow us to effectively grow alongside our community, ensuring access and provision of excellent health care for those who need us. We appreciate the government’s collaboration to help us improve the orthopedic surgical experience for patients in our community.”
St. Joseph’s Health Care London is getting about $251,000 from the fund. It is using the money to transfer some smaller surgical procedures from its main operating rooms to specialized clinic spaces, McNaughton’s office said.
Middlesex Hospital Alliance is getting $233,000 from the fund and is planning to make heating and cooling infrastructure upgrades. One of its sites, the Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital, is using the funds for new ultrasound machines, stretchers and bedside monitors.
The provincial announcement comes weeks after the Progressive Conservative government announced $17.3 million for LHSC and St. Joseph’s Health Care London to offset pandemic-related revenue loss and months before Ontarians head to the polls in June.
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