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A 16-year, $1 billion journey to better health care
Construction dates set for next phase of the big move
Once the redevelopment of London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and St. Joseph’s Health Care, London (SJHC) is completed, the hospital’s top official say the facilities will be among the very best in the country.
It could end up costing nearly a $1 billion and taking about 16 years to complete, but Cliff Nordal, president and chief executive officer of LHSC and SJHC, says the journey will have been worth it.
“By early 2014 everything contemplated will have been competed. It will have been a 15, 16 year journey, but it will see London in the top per cent of health care facilities in our country,” Mr. Nordal says. “It’s a very substantial project. It’s taken enormous time and attention, but we are all pretty excited about how it is going, we haven’t lost enthusiasm about it. We are on time and on budget, it’s going very, very well.”
The hospitals have announced a tentative schedule for construction and move dates is in place and with the exterior of the new North Tower at Victoria Hospital completed, work is underway to finish the interior along with renovations to existing areas at St. Joseph’s.
“This has not just been a little patch and paint job. We aren’t building for the sake of building. Ultimately this is about providing better services and care for our patients,” Mr. Nordal says. “There is enormous pleasure in seeing the outcome of all the work start to take shape and not have to worry about the building anymore. I take great satisfaction in seeing the pieces move along. Once all of phase two is completed, we will have seen 2,500 people moved; that process is already starting.”
The second phase of restructuring will see multiple program moves including the consolidation of the Ivey Eye Institute to St. Joseph’s and move of the Perinatal/Neonatal Intensive Care program from St. Joseph’s to the new North Tower at Victoria Hospital.
“Milestone 2, Phase 2 (as the current stage of the project is called at the hospitals) means we will have realigned and consolidated most of the clinical and support services between the two organizations,” Mr. Nordal says. “Programs that were in multiple spaces for years will now have definite, distinct roles. That will improve workflow. That will improve the patient care environment.”
The completion of the North Tower at LHSC and renovations at SJHC began in July 2008 and is expected to be completed by the spring of 2011 with 28 separate projects and an estimated cost of $400 million. That $400 million is also the estimated cost of what was spend on phase one of the project.
While understandably excited to see the latest milestones reached in the project, Mr. Nordal recognizes not only has the redevelopment taken far longer than expected, but there is also a lot of work to be done.
“This is really the 12th year of a five year program announced by the Health Services Restructuring Committee (HSRC). There have been a lot of gaps, construction delays, but the end product will be better than anything that was ever envisioned to begin with,” Mr. Nordal says. “The plans have evolved over time, to the betterment of the community. It was never anticipated the project would take as long as it did. The HSRC budgeted a timeline not anywhere close to what could be done. But they have been very responsive to the discussions we’ve had. It’s been a noisy, difficult time that has taxed the patience of patients, of family, of staff, but it’s been enormously worthwhile.”
Mr. Nordal says despite all the work done to date, there remain major projects yet to come.
` “We’ve moved from four ERs to two, that’s a major shift. We have the urgent care clinic at St. Joe’s, which sees 45,000 visits per year.
The pressures on the ERs would have been very difficult without that clinic. We are adding a 1,200-space car park at Victoria hospital to deal with staff transfers and patient volume,” Mr. Nordal says.
“We had 42 construction projects in the first phase, 28 in this phase. Phase three will be more of a cleanup, emptying out of areas and then renovating those spaces for other uses.
There is still the construction of two new mental health facilities, which will be finished by late 2013 or 2014.
Our academic role is imperative. So we will have new teaching spaces, a 350-seat auditorium at Victoria, another half-dozen training spaces. Redeveloping the plan has taken a lot of effort, but you are going to see tremendous results.”
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