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The off-site surgical centre across the street from Victoria Hospital is being expanded to triple its capacity, the province says.
The Nazem Kadri surgical centre, named in honour of the NHL star and London native, will be renovated and expanded to add four operating rooms, bringing the total to six. The centre offers daytime, non-urgent surgeries at its Base Line Road location near Victoria Hospital, allowing the hospital to perform more complex surgeries.
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Deputy premier and Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced the news at Victoria Hospital on Thursday afternoon.
“Ontario continues to lead the country with the shortest surgical wait times of any Canadian jurisdiction,” she said. “This expansion will build on that progress, freeing up . . . surgical capacity here at London Health Sciences for more intensive, higher-risk surgeries and reduce wait times for less complex and non-urgent procedures.”
The cost of the expansion and when it will begin is not known because the Ministry of Health is working with LHSC on planning and design, a news release from the province said.
The release points to the project as a piece of $50 billion Queen’s Park plans to spend on health infrastructure over the next decade.
David Musyj, the provincially appointed supervisor of LHSC, said the hospital provides nearly 30,000 surgeries annually with around 2,000 of those done at the Nazem Kadri centre. The centre has conducted more than 8,400 surgeries since it opened in 2020.
The centre frees up space for more than 1,000 complex surgeries at the main hospital campus, and Musyj said the proposed expansion will triple both the number of surgeries on site but also those diverted.
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“We’re going to be able to see exponentially more patients here, and be able to pull, instead of just 1,000 extra cases across the province, the more complex cases, that number is going to be close to 3,000, so it’s going to be quite amazing once this construction is done,” he said.
The benefit will go beyond reducing wait times for Londoners, but also benefit those who come from outside the city, from Windsor to Thunder Bay, Musyj said.
Non-cancer surgery wait times at LHSC have fallen by 18 per cent since the centre opened, Musyj said, calling it “a gem for London.”
“The person who has the cardiac event . . . to be able to gain access here because we’ve created that physical capacity in the main (operating room) or because the lower acuity is done here, that’s the win for them, too,” he added.
Abdel-Rahman Lawendy, medical director of the Nazem Kadri centre, said he’s excited to see the commitment, likening his building to a “release valve” for LHSC.
Expanding also will reduce nighttime surgeries, which he said have their own cost and efficiency complications.
“What we’re expecting is obviously growth, and the province also wants to look at replicating the system to other big hospitals,” Lawendy said. “I think it’s an important step moving forward to trying to solve the challenges that we face in health care.”
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