Mackenzie Health Insider: Mackenzie Health as a system solution to COVID-19 surge

Mackenzie Health as a system solution to COVID-19 surge

Over the past year, Mackenzie Health has supported our community through the COVID-19 pandemic. Our incredible team of frontline health care workers has gone above and beyond to provide the ultimate in care to patients in our region.

Now, as COVID-19 cases in Ontario continue to rise at an alarming rate and hospitals are being stretched to our limits, we’re proud to be able to provide some relief to our overstretched health care system.

Next month’s opening of Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital will be a different type of opening than we anticipated, and a significant change to what we committed to our staff, physicians and our community. However, we’re proud to step up and be part of the bigger provincial solution as we all work together to fight COVID-19.

All this and more in this month’s edition of the Insider.

An overstretched health care system

The efforts of Mackenzie Health frontline staff and physicians have kept patients who have come to us for care safe.

In November 2020, the provincial government introduced a new Incident Management System (IMS) to help ease the capacity pressures some of the busiest hospitals have been facing by supporting the movement of patients to hospitals with the available resources. As part of these collaborative efforts, Mackenzie Health has transferred more than 60 of our critically ill patients from Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital to neighbouring hospitals in recent weeks.

This structure helped us get through the challenges we faced over the holidays, but with provincial modelling projecting that within the next few weeks Ontario will have 500 patients with COVID-19 in ICUs, a larger solution is needed.

Now, it’s our turn to support our neighbouring hospitals and the health care system as a whole.

Mackenzie Health has a solution

When it opens on February 7, Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital will be a solution to capacity pressures experienced across the health care system

When Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital opens in February, it will be a system solution to address the expected surge in COVID-19 patients needing acute care.

At a press conference held earlier today, Premier Ford announced that when Mackenzie Health opens Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital on February 7, it will open with an exclusive focus on creating new capacity for imminent system needs: critical and acute care beds to support the province’s capacity pressures. The Emergency Department at Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital will not be open until the surge has been adequately addressed.

Opening Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital was always intended to be a tangible solution to ending hallway medicine. Now, we have an even bigger role to play in supporting the health care system as we face unprecedented challenges caused by the pandemic.

Operations at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital will continue as they are until the system has stabilized and we are able to fully realize our two-hospital future. Programs that were slated to move to Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital, including our Woman and Child, Inpatient Mental Health and Sorbara Integrated Stroke programs, will remain at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital for the time being.

We know many of our community members will likely have questions about what this new information means for you and your families. As these plans continue to evolve, we’re committed to providing you with more information in the coming weeks and months, including at a telephone town hall very soon. Check our website and our social media channels for more updates.

We’re proud to step up and be part of the provincial solution as we all work together to fight COVID-19. Thank you for your support!