After 10 years, $1.7B and several controversies, Vaughan’s hospital is complete.

'It took a lot of effort'

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 21, 2020
Megan Ogilvie

It’s been more than a decade in the works, comes with a $1.7 billion price tag and has overcome controversies, political hurdles and the onset of a global pandemic, but construction of the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital is now complete.

The long-awaited building, located minutes from Highway 400 and within view of Canada’s Wonderland, means residents of Vaughan -- one of the country’s fastest-growing cities with a population of 335,000 -- can receive hospital care within their community.

A part of Mackenzie Health, the hospital will open its doors to patients in early 2021 after training thousands of staff, testing hundreds of pieces of equipment and computer systems and practising how to safely deliver care in a new building.

A smart hospital, the Vaughan building will be able to seamlessly connect patients to their electronic medical records at all parts of their care journey. It also has a state-of-the-art ventilation system that contains air flow within some rooms -- and even entire hospital floors -- which is vital to curb the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

Critically, and especially during a pandemic, the new hospital will relieve pressure from Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, which in recent years has operated consistently above capacity with long emergency department waits, as it struggles to keep pace with York Region’s rapid population growth.

“This (Vaughan) hospital is coming online at the right time,” said Mackenzie Health president and CEO Altaf Stationwala. “The second wave of COVID … the challenges (our region) has had with hallway medicine.

“For me, as a resident in this community, that’s what I take the most comfort in -- that we’re adding capacity in a region that’s really stretched for health-care resources.”

The hospital’s construction partners handed over keys to the building on Aug. 26, a milestone being marked Friday by hospital leaders, construction partners and local and provincial government officials.

As staff complete the final touches to the building, the Star was given exclusive access to the 11-floor hospital, including the Magna Emergency department, the birthing centre and the hospital’s Vic De Zen Family Welcome Centre.

David Stolte, vice-president of strategy and redevelopment, said one of the key goals in the hospital’s design is to bring an abundance of natural light into the building, with large windows in patient and staff areas and the use of sky lights and courtyards in the layout.

“Right from early planning, we knew in our evidence-based design that we wanted natural light; it’s conducive to a healthy environment,” he said, adding that all the facility’s roofs visible from patient and staff areas are green roofs and planted with vegetation.

“We set out to design this hospital through the eyes of a patient. We think this is something we’ve been able to hold true through the planning, design and implementation process.”

Another fundamental element patients will immediately notice is how technology is integrated into all aspects of the building and patient care, Stolte said.

For example, nursing staff will have hand-held devices that connect to patients’ electronic medical records. Hospital beds will weigh patients, monitor their vital signs and send alerts if a patient is at risk of a fall. Equipment is tagged with real-time locating systems. And patients admitted to hospital will be provided a bedside tablet that connects them to medical records, allows them to learn about prescribed medications and procedures and notifies them of the name of their care providers when they walk into the room.

The technologies “will help patients and their families with their experience,” Stolte said. “It will help with the safety and help the staff by improving their day-to-day job. The type of job that can be handled with technology will be, so the care team can spend more face time with patients and their families.”

Stolte said his team planned for everything -- except for a global pandemic. Keeping the project on track while working through pandemic protocols and ensuring everyone’s safety was among the project’s biggest challenges, he said.

“There were a lot of challenges with supplies and materials, the construction teams being able to maintain their workforce on-site. It took a lot of effort, and kudos to our construction partners for being diligent and thoughtful during that process.”

The idea of a hospital in Vaughan was conceived in 2003, and got support from the province in 2007. But for years, the project was bogged down by a complicated land deal between the City of Vaughan and a third party, the Vaughan Health Campus of Care (VHCC), which believed it had a stake in the 33-hectare parcel after it helped broker a land deal for the city.

The VHCC initially had wanted to build the hospital, but when the province distanced itself from the group, the VHCC decided it would use it for “hospital-related services.”

But as years ticked on, taxpayers became frustrated at the slow movement, especially because they were on the hook for the $80 million land cost that showed up as a surcharge on their property taxes in 2009, which is expected to continue until 2022. They were also upset at having to go outside of the city for medical care.

Stationwala, who became CEO in 2010, said there were times during the decade-long journey when he wasn’t sure if the project would proceed.

“I would occasionally have these moments of reality, when my neighbours would say: ‘That hospital is never going to get built, the politics are always going to get in the way,’ ” Stationwala said.

“There were many bumps along the way. Every day I had to keep looking at my kids and my parents and my spouse and say, ‘You know what, I believe in this.’ I have a much later stake in this (hospital) because I’m going to need health care in this community.”

A breakthrough came in 2015 when the VHCC signed a deal with the City of Vaughan to transfer land to Mackenzie Health for the hospital. The city then signed a 99-year lease with Mackenzie Health allowing them to start accepting proposals for the project to move forward.

“I didn’t let the politics get to me,” said Stationwala. “I looked at data and evidence and that’s what I kept putting in front of all of those stakeholders that wanted to go a different way.

“But I think in the end, the community came together and we got through it.”

Dr. David Rauchwerger, Mackenzie Health’s chief of emergency medicine, is looking forward to offering care to all those who need it in the community. He said the Richmond Hill hospital has been stressed and over capacity “for some time now” due to population growth in the region.

“The (patient) numbers we were told that would justify two hospitals, we surpassed that about five years ago,” he said, adding that being constantly over capacity leads to ongoing issues with hallway medicine, particularly in the emergency department. “In Richmond Hill, we have 20 designated stretchers in the hallways because of our capacity issues.”

Vaughan’s emergency department will relieve the current pressure in Richmond Hill and is designed to reduce wait times by more efficiently moving patients from triage to registration to the department’s designated treatment zones, Rauchwerger said.

It’s also designed with individual treatment cubicles to ensure patient privacy, often among the biggest concerns people have when coming to hospital, he said.

As well, the new emergency department can quickly offload patients arriving by ambulance into a private bay, again protecting privacy, he said.

Rauchwerger was among the hospital staff who participated in life-size mock-ups of hospital spaces during the new building’s design process. He said this allowed those who deliver care to tweak spaces, such as advising on the placement of medical equipment, so both patients and staff have the best possible experience.

Staff also rehearsed how they would provide care in the mocked-up spaces, something the emergency teams and other staff will do in Vaughan many times before the hospital opens next year, said Mary-Agnes Wilson, Mackenzie Health’s executive vice-president, chief operating officer and chief nursing executive.

Wilson is leading the team that will recruit 1,500 staff and train more than 3,000 between the two hospitals, including physicians and nurses, environmental services staff and lab and pharmacy technicians.

“We need to train teams so they know where the equipment is and get to it as quickly as possible,” she said. “They need to know where to get the medication, and how to deliver that as efficiently as possible.

“That’s the kind of thing we’ll be testing and training our staff through over and over and over again, so that on opening day, our first patient who comes to Vaughan is treated with the same level of care -- or better -- that they’re getting today.”

In June, Mackenzie Health announced its new site would be named the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital to formally recognize the family of Toronto-based developers that donated $40 million to the hospital campaign. The name, which is featured prominently on the hospital, generated some controversy due to Cortellucci’s run for the Italian Senate in 2018 alongside a coalition of right-wing parties who have called for, among other things, closing Italian mosques and removing migrants from the country.

The hospital tower also features the names De Gasperis-Muzzo -- prominent developers in the GTA -- for their $15 million donation. The Muzzo family name has recently come under scrutiny after the conviction of drunk driver Marco Muzzo, whose actions led to the horrific deaths of four members of the same family, including three siblings, in 2015.

Stationwala defended the naming of buildings for private individuals, a practice that was reinstituted by the Conservative government in December 2019, saying it was not unusual.

“Benefactors to any institution have their names on it, whether it’s a library, whether it’s a university, whether it’s a hospital. So what we’ve done is no different than any other hospital,” he said, referring to Toronto’s Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital or Michael Garron Hospital, as examples.

“So we as a society … celebrate our donors and what they give back to society in all dimensions of our public and civic institutions.”