Local hospital celebrates two decades of cardiac care excellence
Posted Jul 6, 2023 09:54:16 AM.
“I can’t emphasize the importance of having a cardiac centre locally strongly enough. It’s really changed how we provide care to our patients for our region.”
St. Mary’s General Hospital (SMGH) has been serving Waterloo-Wellington and beyond through their Regional Cardiac Care Centre (RCCC) for 20 years. They provide care to 1.4 million people annually.
The site that became SMGH was named in 1999, and four years later, on July 7 2003, the hospital had its first open heart surgery. Before then, SMGH was able to diagnose heart conditions, but if someone needed urgent care, they needed to be shipped to London, Hamilton or Toronto.
Dr. Heather Warren, Vice President of Medical Programming at SMGH told CityNews why our local RCCC is critical for the area.
“For many cardiac conditions, treatment is quite time-sensitive,” said Warren. “Each passing minute, there’s more damage being done [to the patient]. Having access to those life-saving interventions is very, very key.”
Warren said that their cardiac program has doubled in size and number of operations since 2003 and the department now makes up somewhere between 30 to 40 per cent of the hospital’s work.
She added that St. Mary’s is striving to be the safest and most effective hospital in the nation. For seven years, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) Cardiac Care Quality Indicators Report has consistently placed SMGH among the top cardiac programs in Canada.
SMGH’s reputation and quality of care has also helped them with recruitment, which bodes well for the future of the hospital.
They are working with Grand River Hospital on Building the Future of Care Together. The joint project will see a new hospital built in Waterloo Region. The two hospitals are currently in the site selection phase.
