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General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours
This location would be the only Emergency Department for all of Kitchener and Waterloo. As someone who works in emergency services, people will die in the back of ambulances waiting to drive that far north. Horrible location. St Marys Hospital has one of the highest success survivability records in Canada for a number of reasons however, a north location away from the greater population will decrease success rate. I will be writing to politicians and advocating for a central location. I am tired of people in Waterloo running this region.
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(06-24-2022, 08:57 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: This location would be the only Emergency Department for all of Kitchener and Waterloo.  As someone who works in emergency services,  people will die in the back of ambulances waiting to drive that far north.  Horrible location.  St Marys Hospital has one of the highest success survivability records in Canada for a number of reasons however, a north location away from the greater population will decrease success rate. I will be writing to politicians and advocating for a central location.  I am tired of people in Waterloo running this region.

Why would this be the only emergency location?
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(06-24-2022, 09:54 AM)CP42 Wrote:
(06-24-2022, 08:57 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: This location would be the only Emergency Department for all of Kitchener and Waterloo.  As someone who works in emergency services,  people will die in the back of ambulances waiting to drive that far north.  Horrible location.  St Marys Hospital has one of the highest success survivability records in Canada for a number of reasons however, a north location away from the greater population will decrease success rate. I will be writing to politicians and advocating for a central location.  I am tired of people in Waterloo running this region.

Why would this be the only emergency location?

From reading the announcement I came to the same conclusion. Closing the St Mary's location, and making the GRH location into a facility for outpatient procedures, leaving the new building the only emergency department in KW. Which is why it also seems to me ridiculous that they want so much land, as that guarantees it'll be at the edge of the city.
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I think these are just concepts so far ...

And, while I live in Kitchener (which has three hospital complexes), I have no problem with the new one being in Waterloo. They just need to do the right thing in terms what services each hospital provides.
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The plan is to make this hospital a new super hospital. It will be the only Emerg department in KW... That's a problem. if it isn't central.
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Put it where the Aud currently is?
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(06-24-2022, 11:04 AM)DK519 Wrote: Put it where the Aud currently is?

Yeah, that is about 40 acres to start.
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(06-24-2022, 08:57 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: This location would be the only Emergency Department for all of Kitchener and Waterloo.  As someone who works in emergency services,  people will die in the back of ambulances waiting to drive that far north.  Horrible location.  St Marys Hospital has one of the highest success survivability records in Canada for a number of reasons however, a north location away from the greater population will decrease success rate. I will be writing to politicians and advocating for a central location.  I am tired of people in Waterloo running this region.

I don't think you'd find a more central location at the same scale. Even the AUD lands are only 40 acres.

Not that I agree that 60 acres are needed.
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University of Waterloo scholars aim to solve housing puzzle: Where are the family apartments?

Melissa Bowman on Twitter: "While I look forward to what this research finds out, I'm reminded that just this week #KitCouncil voted down a proposal that included ~80 3-bdrm options."
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(06-24-2022, 10:48 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: The plan is to make this hospital a new super hospital.  It will be the only Emerg department in KW...  That's a problem. if it isn't central.

At this point, I would personally not characterize it as a "plan" yet, it's really more at the idea or concept stage. Plenty of things will be discussed and revised before actual plans are made.
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(06-24-2022, 12:55 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(06-24-2022, 10:48 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: The plan is to make this hospital a new super hospital.  It will be the only Emerg department in KW...  That's a problem. if it isn't central.

At this point, I would personally not characterize it as a "plan" yet, it's really more at the idea or concept stage. Plenty of things will be discussed and revised before actual plans are made.

Where does the idea that this would be the only Emergency department come from?

It’s a horrible, obviously stupid idea; but are we just speculating that the reason for the large land requirement is because services will be centralized (what’s it called if things are centralized into a non-central location?), or is there a concept document somewhere which proposes that Emergency should be consolidated?

There are at least 2 reasons I can think of off the top of my head why this level of consolidation is clearly inappropriate:

  1. Travel time. Obvious, shouldn’t need further explanation.
  2. Resiliency. What happens if an Emergency department has to close for some reason, such as fire, terrorist attack, pathogen outbreak, …?

This is sufficiently clear that if a supposed expert were to come out in favour of the consolidation, I would question the relevance of their expertise, not the points I make above.
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(06-24-2022, 10:48 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: The plan is to make this hospital a new super hospital.  It will be the only Emerg department in KW...  That's a problem. if it isn't central.

I'm well acquainted with many of the higher administrative staff at GRH, so maybe I can ask around and see what sort of goals they're aiming to achieve. Maybe they can share some of the details as to how they're envisioning this new hospital to function like and where it might be. But yeah whatever the plan is now, it's be very preliminary and in early stages so they might have no idea.

It would be nice if they could buy the Sun Life parking lot nextdoor and build a new building there (putting all the parking underground). It's not a big location, but you could build a taller hospital (say 15-16 floors or more) and put a state of the art ER and acute care units there. Then, renovate and transform the existing building into chronic care units, maintain the GRH cancer centre, expand the AIMH/CAIP and PICA (adult inpatient mental health/child adolescent inpatient psychiatry/psychiatric intensive care area) and grow the outpatient stuff. Hell, they could purchase some property across the street even: the CTV studios are for sale and they could consolidate that, the CoK parking lot and that soccer field into one property and build another structure there, using some tunnels as well as walkways above ground to connect the two buildings. GRH is partnered with both the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College (and I think Laurier for psychology/social work) so they could even have that act as a teaching wing of the hospital. That way, it's all still very central to the region and can utilize existing space, rather than move it way out to the middle of nowhere.
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(06-24-2022, 10:48 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: The plan is to make this hospital a new super hospital.  It will be the only Emerg department in KW...  That's a problem. if it isn't central.

I must have misread the announcement, because what I got from it is that the current GRH location on King Street would retain an emergency department.

The three main components from the website:
* A new, state-of-the-art hospital site in Kitchener-Waterloo.
* Renewing and repurposing the existing mid-town K-W Campus as an ambulatory and urgent care centre.
* Renewing and expanding the Freeport Campus in Kitchener for modernized and expanded rehabilitation capacity.

Is an "ambulatory and urgent care centre" different from an emergency department?
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(06-24-2022, 02:38 PM)timc Wrote: Is an "ambulatory and urgent care centre" different from an emergency department?

Yes, very different from an emergency department.

An urgent care centre is a step between a walk-in clinic and an emergency department. We already have some locally, like https://onyxurgentcare.com/ , but I assume the one at GRH would be 24/7. But it's not somewhere an ambulance would take you.

Ambulatory care is a synonym for outpatient care, where they treat you without a full hospital admission. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulatory_care

The fact they refer to it as repurposing the midtown site I think means they're planning to discontinue emergency services there, otherwise it would just be an addition.
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Would the Bramm St. yard be a large enough property?
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