After multiple announcements and five years of work, the Montreal Heart Institute (ICM) is inaugurating its new facilities. Individual rooms in the emergency room, enlarged intensive care unit, outpatient center, simulation laboratories for training: the project worth $300 million will help attract and retain staff, estimates the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé.
“Each time we arrive with a new project that is finalized, there is no longer any recruitment issue,” he said Monday, during the inauguration of the premises, accompanied by the Minister of ‘Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon. “There is a big part settled. »
Minister Christian Dubé notably cited the example of the Montreal University Hospital Center (CHUM) and the McGill University Health Center (MUHC), which have benefited from “major investments” over the last ten years. During the pandemic, respiratory therapists left the dilapidated facilities at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital to work at the CHUM or the MUHC. “They were ready to continue working for COVID, but in a better environment,” he explained.
Four times more single rooms
Thanks to the expansion and modernization project, the number of individual rooms at the ICM increased from 25 to 100. The surface area of the institute’s emergency room, which welcomes 20,000 patients each year, has tripled.
“Instead of having stretchers side by side separated by a curtain, now we have individual rooms for patients,” said its president and CEO, Mélanie La Couture, at a press briefing. The caregivers’ workspace has also been reorganized to promote calm and sleep for patients.
The Montreal Heart Institute also has three simulation laboratories used for training its staff. Employees of other healthcare establishments may have access. “We reproduced an identical emergency room, a critical care room, a hospitalization room,” explained M.me Sewing. State-of-the-art mannequins make it possible to “simulate various complications”.
During the work, the ICM created an outpatient “wing” bringing together specialized clinics (heart failure and atrial fibrillation, among others) and a day medicine center. “Patients are received and treated quickly in our specialized clinics, and therefore not hospitalized,” explained Mélanie La Couture.
The expansion and modernization project was originally expected to cost $257 million. The bill now stands at around 300 million. Minister Christian Dubé believes that this additional cost is “very reasonable”, the work having started five years ago. The ICM Foundation contributed to the project by investing more than $24 million.