At this point in the new hospital’s design and planning, we know, for the most part, what’s going where in the hospital. However, we won’t know what’s going where in the Clinical Support and Research Centre (CSRC) until after we select its developer partner in 2022.
Overall, the hospital’s layout, which is reflective of our guiding principles, has been organized for the efficient flows of patients, staff and supplies. Here are some things to note:
1. Although the hospital includes an 11-storey and a nine-storey tower, think of it as one unified setting. The two towers seamlessly merge on floors one through four, and floors five through nine are connected by links.
2. The diagram shows what’s on each floor and in each tower but doesn’t show exact proportions or exactly which departments are adjacent to each other. For example, on the main floor, the Emergency Department is actually (and conveniently) right next to the Stabilization Unit. In the coming months we’ll share floor layouts, which will show you exact adjacencies.
3. The hospital has been organized to minimize the distance patients have to travel to health services. This starts with the main entrance and lobby being in the centre of the campus. As people enter the lobby, the reception desk and wayfinding are immediately visible. Elevators, just a few steps away, are located where the east and west towers meet. The elevators act as a ‘hub,’ moving people up to the inpatient and outpatient floors (organized somewhat like ‘spokes’) where reception desks or waiting areas are conveniently located just off the elevators or intuitive wayfinding helps people easily find Care Team Stations.
4. Where services are located creates synergies, which reflect patient-centred care and enhanced efficiency. Here are three examples, but there are many, many more:
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- The major surgical and interventional suites are together on the 3rd floor, and next to the critical care complex whose acutely ill patients with the highest demand for those services, will have short travel times to be taken there.
- Medical Device and Reprocessing Department (MDRD) is vertically connected to the Surgical and Interventional suites on the 3rd floor and to Scopes and Procedures on the 5th floor for optimal access.
- On the 8th floor our three Mental Health Inpatient units will be collocated in the west tower, and directly linked to the Urban Health Inpatient Unit, the Eating Disorders Programs and the brand new Medical Psychiatry Unit which are on the east tower’s 8th floor, to facilitate access to patients and team collaboration.
5. We anticipate the hospital will connect, via a skybridge, to the Clinical Support and Research Centre (CSRC) so people can easily move between the CSRC and the hospital.
6. The hospital’s four-level parkade includes about 1,100 parking spaces, compared to about 450 onsite stalls at the current hospital. More parking will be under the CSRC too.
7. Although we know what components are on each floor, the specific clinical usage of some floors is still being determined. For example, we know we’ll have six floors of generic inpatient units (each with 64 beds), but – with a few current exceptions, such as #4 (bullet 3) above – which specific inpatient services are located on some of those floors won’t be decided for a few more years. This gives us the flexibility to respond to changes in patient population needs that may happen over the next four or five years. And, speaking of flexibility, which is one of the Project’s guiding principles, it reflects how spaces have been designed for flexibility – almost any of our current inpatient services could go anywhere on those six floors. Spaces designed for flexibility allows us to better adapt our services to changing patient needs over the long term.
You may look at this diagram and wonder “Where will I work?“ . Our guiding principle of “flexibility” asks us to think differently about our physical work locations, so we can adapt quickly to patient needs. Health care will continue to evolve in the next few years, so in some cases we will wait to assign specific departments within each floor. Even so, some areas will never be “labeled” so they can be used by multiple teams as we wrap our care around the patients we serve, much like we plan to do in the Integrated Patient Program model.
Remember, a new building is only one part of how we’ll transform care. We’ll also be evolving how we work, and our clinical practices in order to affect health care system transformation.
