The new Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital will open its doors on Dec. 13, 2015. The updated facility will be three times larger than the existing hospital it is replacing. The project is being completed on time and on budget, according to a Government of Ontario press release, with a total cost of $2.27 billion.
“I am proud that the new Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital will offer a full range of health services—and a better patient experience for the people of Oakville,” said Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in a press release.
The new facility will offer services that are not available at the current Oakville-Trafalgar Hospital, including endoscopy ultrasounds, a cancer clinic, and stress echocardiography tests for heart disease.
The new facility will offer a quieter environment thanks to its technological updates: wireless technology is replacing a paging system for non-emergency updates, and laboratory robotics will help to process specimens and deliver results more quickly.
The expansion will add 135 inpatient beds to the hospital’s current capacity, increasing their inpatient availability to 457 beds by the hospital’s opening day.
The new facility will offer a range of healthcare services, including maternal and child care, emergency care, critical care, ambulatory care, complex continuing care, rehabilitation, and surgery. It will also offer mental health services in both inpatient and outpatient formats for adults, adolescents, and children.
“This marks the completion of a journey that began more than a decade ago as we set out to build a state-of-the-art healthcare facility that would meet the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of our community for many years to come,” said Halton Healthcare President and CEO Denise Hardenne in a press release.
The province is set to provide $11 billion in hospital capital grants over the next decade to improve healthcare infrastructure. The Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital is one of three hospitals operated by Halton Healthcare, which serves the needs of residents in Milton, Halton Hills, and Oakville.
“By investing in vital infrastructure like hospitals—and in the healthcare system supported by that infrastructure—we are ensuring that people in communities all across Ontario have access to the quality healthcare services they deserve,” said Premier Wynne in a press release. According to the Halton Healthcare website, the Oakville hospital expansion is not the only project underway. They have also expanded the emergency and diagnostic imaging departments at Georgetown Hospital, with a 14,000 square foot addition that created space for the hospital’s first CT scanner. In April 2015, construction broke ground on a 330,000 square foot expansion to Milton District Hospital, tripling the size of the current facility, and this project is scheduled to be completed in Spring 2017. All of these expansions are undertaken in an effort to meet the needs of huge population growth in southwestern Ontario.
In 2011, Halton Healthcare was officially affiliated with McMaster to train medical residents and students at all three hospitals.