Hospital project hopes to break ground by 2010

The McGill University Healthcare Centre hopes to break ground on its three-campus major hospital renovation project by 2010, and have patients in cutting-edge individualized room beds by 2013.

"That's what we're aiming for and that is what's going to happen," said the project's public-private partnership director, St. Claire Armitage, during a tour of a demo patient room currently on display to the public at the Dorval Gardens shopping mall in the West Island.

In August, the MUHC should receive bidding proposals by top proponents for the major renovation project. According to Armitage, the MUHC should make up its mind on which partner to go with by December, and work on the project should start a month later.

"It is too soon t to talk about a completion date," he warned, "not least because proponents have to come back to us."

The project looks to re-organize the various hospitals under the MUHC's care into three campuses called Glen, Mountain and Lachine. The Montreal General Hospital would be the basis of the Mountain campus, according to MUHC marketing director Julie Quenneville. Lachine Hospital will merge with Camille-Lefebvre long-term care centre to form the Lachine campus. The Royal Victoria Hospital, the Montreal Chest Institute and Montreal Childrens' Hospital will form the Glen campus.

On display at the Dorval mall currently is a model room of what is planned on all three campuses.

"The basic philosophy is this: when you put the patient in the room they get better quicker if you give them a nice environment that they can control," Armitage said.

As such, elements such as the control of natural light penetration, lighting, a television, heating, etc. will all be at the patient's fingertips thanks to remote controls.

The new rooms also have a wider area for visiting family members to be more comfortable, as well as a washing station for nurses and hospital staff.

"Apart from everything else, what we think this allows us to do is to control much better nosocomal infections," said Armitage.

In its literature on the project, the MUHC explains that individual washing stations in the rooms, for example, ensure that medical staff can wash their hands in each room before going to see their next patient.

However, the cost of each of these rooms remains a mystery. "You can't think about it in terms of individual units," Armitage insisted, since the project is involves redevelopment of all three sites. The total project is estimated to cost $1.597 billion on the MUHC's website.

Armitage said individualized room care should be less costly though than it is now though.

"People get better quicker, they spend less time doing that, and most importantly, they come back less, because the outcome is better," he said.

According to Jim Gates, director of the MUHC's health network, the MUHC serves roughly 40,000 visitors from the West Island per year.

"We're working with the hospitals on the West Island, the different centres on the West Island," he said, "so that they handle some of these patients that we're currently seeing downtown."

The individual model room will next be showcased at the Rockland Shopping Centre in Montreal. Visitors are invited to donate toward the MUHC's $300 million fundraising goal to finance a part of the project.