Today, we joined with our partners to mark another important milestone that gets us one more step closer to opening day: substantial completion of Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital!
Achieving substantial completion means that construction on the building is nearly complete. Mackenzie Health teams can now begin the work of turning the building into a fully functional hospital so that when we open in early 2021, we’re ready to provide the ultimate in care to our patients.
From left: Altaf Stationwala, President and CEO of Mackenzie Health; Michael Lindsay, President, Project Delivery at Infrastructure Ontario; Maurizio Bevilacqua, Mayor of Vaughan; Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health; Kelly Wallace, Vice President and District Manager, PCL Constructors Canada Inc.
At a virtual event earlier today, Mackenzie Health leadership joined with local and provincial government representatives and project partners to participate in a ceremonial hand over of the keys to the building – or in the case of Canada’s first smart hospital, a swipe card!
Thank you to everyone who joined us virtually this morning and watched the event live. If you weren’t able to tune in live this morning, you can watch a recording of the event here.
When we officially broke ground in October of 2016, we began a journey towards constructing what would become Vaughan’s first hospital, Canada’s first smart hospital and the first net new hospital in Ontario in more than 30 years.
Almost four years ago, we marked that occasion with a special groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the new Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital along with our our government and construction partners and today we were thrilled to be joined by our partners once again to celebrate yet another historic moment.
“Infrastructure Ontario is pleased to have partnered with Mackenzie Health to deliver Canada’s first state-of-the-art, smart hospital using the P3 model, said Michael Lindsay, President of Project Delivery at Infrastructure Ontario. “The entire team successfully navigated this project through a pandemic with no impacts to the project schedule, which is a truly incredible achievement. We take a great deal of pride in seeing this project completed knowing the immediate, positive impact it will have on the community.”
Although the building itself may look complete now, there’s so much work ahead before we’re ready to safely open our doors and begin treating patients.
“Our priority is delivering safe care to all of our patients – from the very first patient on opening day to the tens of thousands of others who will rely on us each year,” said Altaf Stationwala, President and CEO of Mackenzie Health. “When Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital opens to patients in early 2021, our community can be confident that Mackenzie Health staff, nurses and physicians are prepared to provide the best possible care in a state-of-the-art facility.”
Over the next few months, Mackenzie Health will continue the recruitment efforts to bring approximately 1,500 new staff, 100 new physicians and 350 volunteers to the team. We will also be training staff, physicians and volunteers, and installing and testing 30,000 pieces of equipment and furniture to make sure everything is operating exactly as it should on opening day. This is a massive undertaking and requires a team of experts to coordinate and implement. Equipment can range from a medicine cart or a computer workstation that can be delivered and installed in a matter of minutes to a pharmacy robot or a CT scanner that could each take days to deliver and install.
Here’s an inside look as our CT scanners were recently delivered to Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital.
We wouldn’t have been able to reach this project milestone without the hard work of so many Mackenzie Health staff, physicians and volunteers. This is truly a collaborative effort with many external partners including the project consortium, architects, project consultants, vendors and government. And, of course, we can’t forget the incredible support from our community who, to date, have collectively raised $178 million to make this project a reality. Their dedication and commitment to creating the ultimate in health care has been remarkable.
We know how excited our community is about opening our new hospital in Vaughan. We can’t wait for opening day either! When it opens, Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital will add much-needed capacity to the health care system and, working in tandem with Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, it will double access to care for our community.
Over the next few weeks and months, we look forward to sharing more about the unique services that will be offered at both Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital and Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital as we continue to provide sneak peeks into our two-hospital future.