Waterloo Regions needs a new hospital

Waterloo Regions needs a new hospital

Waterloo Regions needs a new hospital

On May 26th the Editorial Board of The Waterloo Record wrote a fantasic piece on the need for a new hospital in the region. You can read that article by clicking here or at this alternative link.

Below is the response published in the May 30th edition of The Waterloo Record and submitted by Paul McIntyre Royston President & CEO of Grand River Hospital Foundation and Susan Dusick President & CEO of St. Mary's General Hospital Foundation.

Our community can make a new hospital a reality….but first the MRIs

St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation and Grand River Hospital Foundation agree: Waterloo Region is in dire need of new hospital infrastructure, and we know you—the people of our community—are key to making this a reality.

When we lacked core health services in Waterloo Region in the early 2000s, you came together in support of the One Voice, One Vision Campaign. You transformed local health care and created the foundation for our health care system as we now know it.

So many of the health care services that we rely on every single day resulted from your support of One Voice, One Vision. Grand River Regional Cancer Centre, the Regional Cardiac Care Centre at St. Mary’s, enhanced mental health services and expanded emergency care at all of the Region’s hospitals: All of these pillars of local health care were made possible by the generous people of our community who gave their time and money and rallied for the critical health services we so rightfully needed and deserved.

Fast forward nearly 20 years, and our local health care infrastructure is once again outdated and failing to meet the needs of our community. Despite being one of the fastest growing and aging areas in Canada, the Region continues to have far fewer hospital beds per capita than both the provincial and national averages, and our aging hospitals are struggling to keep up with the needs of our growing community. Parts of St. Mary’s and Grand River are 50 to 100 years old, and as technology advances and care standards evolve, the capabilities of our current infrastructure are falling behind. No matter how you look at it, the bottom line is that Waterloo Region needs new, modern hospital infrastructure.

Recently the Ontario government provided a planning grant to Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital, which will allow us to build on years of planning together to expand and modernize local hospital care. Decisions on all aspects of this next phase of planning will be made collaboratively and in consultation with our community. We know we will be able to build something better together than we ever could alone.

As planning for a new hospital begins to take shape, our Foundations have come together to take an incredible first step that will set the stage for and bring us closer to our shared vision of a world class health system in Waterloo Region. In December, the provincial government committed to increasing local MRI services, and Grand River and St. Mary’s both received operating funds to support a new MRI machine at each hospital, while the Foundations and their supporters rally to fund the purchase of these additional MRI machines for our community.

We have already received an incredibly generous amount of support to date that has led us to surpass the halfway point in our joint fundraising campaign. But we still need your help to reach our shared $10 million goal and bring two additional MRI machines to Kitchener-Waterloo.

Be a part of this important first step towards building a world class health system right here. To make a donation or learn more about the joint MRI campaign donate here.

Written by Paul McIntyre Royston President & CEO of Grand River Hospital Foundation and Susan Dusick President & CEO of St. Mary's General Hospital Foundation.