ABOYNE – On Aug. 9 at 6am the doors to the old Groves Memorial Community Hospital on Union Street in Fergus were closed and locked for the last time. Simultaneously the doors to the new Groves hospital on 131 Frederick Campbell St. in Aboyne opened to patients for the first time.
“The thing that hit me the hardest was walking through our inpatient area and the chipped paint and the faded colours and the small rooms and sharing rooms sometimes with two other patients,” Groves CEO and president Stephen Street said of the old hospital.
“In the morning that was the condition of our inpatients.
“In the afternoon walking around visiting them [at the new site], seeing the smiles on their faces, their own private room, very bright windows, spacious areas, large bathrooms with showers, large TV for them, patient lift, they just were overjoyed with their new home.”
However, the historical moment did not come easily.
The new Groves hospital was more than a decade in the making and the Groves Hospital Foundation raised over $20 million dollars to make it a reality.
Street said the hospital administration began moving into the new 158,000-square-foot Groves site at the Wellington Place campus a couple months ago, with administrative functions
moving first.
“Early occupiers is what we deemed them,” he said.
Their presence allowed the hospital staff to test some of the systems before the hospital was fully functioning with patients and the public in attendance.
Next, the health information department moved to the new hospital before the Aug. 3 civic holiday long weekend. At that point old patient records and charts moved over.
The Tuesday after the long weekend is when the big moves began.
“Each day a different service would be moving over and packing and unpacking and getting settled in and that allowed for a phased stabilization period for each of our services,” Street said.
That left just the emergency and inpatients at the old hospital on Aug. 9 – moving day.
“We were staffing both facilities in parallel and by the time 6am hit, everyone was treated in the emerge department at the old Groves and our Dr. (John) Stickney who has over 43 years of service with the hospital locked the doors for the last ER shift,” Street said.
Dr. John Stickney, who has over 43 years of service with the hospital,
had the honours of locking the ER doors at the old Groves location.
Photo by Greg Fess Photography
“We had a number of extra staff and physicians in the system so that helped move patients through.”
The hospital spent time advertising the news of the move so only individuals who really needed the emergency department were attending that weekend. The less urgent cases were encouraged to wait to attend at the new hospital.
The move was especially difficult at this time with the global COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our staff and physicians worked extremely hard providing a COVID response but also preparing the building for occupancy and they knew how important it was and we were very lucky that we found the low right when we had scheduled our move,” he said. “If we were experiencing the same volume of COVID suspect patients as we were in April and May it would have been a different move.
“But we were fortunate that we have so few cases in our community right now.”
However, Street did say that they took the same precautions they would have if the COVID-19 cases had been prevalent.
“As the transfers were happening with patients we had a team of our support service attendants that were cleaning down every piece of equipment involved in the transfer just to take every precaution,” he said.
“So that didn’t change but I think the planning took a new level of intensity because we were in COVID and I would just say I’m extremely proud of what the team was able to accomplish.”
About 28 inpatients were moved to the new hospital between 7am and noon on Aug. 9.
“Patients had breakfast at the old site and lunch at the new site,” Street said.
And the move went off without a hitch.
“Hundreds of hours went into planning and the logistics around every aspect of the move, supplies and equipment and patients and staff, people have gone over many, many times,” he said. “It was the smoothest move I’ve ever been involved in.”
Patients were also pleased with the move.
“We’ve done lots of rounding with the patients and they are thrilled with the space, with the environment,” said patient care manager Heather Reid about a week after the hospital opened.
She added that some of the benefits of the new hospital for patients is the increased number of private rooms, the windows in each patient room showing the rural landscape, individual room temperature control and technology equipped rooms.
With the new space, also comes the ability to offer more capacity in services that were reduced due to COVID-19.
The additional space has allowed for more ambulatory and diagnostic services to meet the demands of the community, while adhering to COVID-19 guidelines and within the first week emergency volumes reached the levels seen before the move at the old Groves.
“We’ve had busy days because we’ve had a number of acute cases,” Street said. “But overall our numbers are where we expect them to be.”
Another feature of the new site is better infection control measures that were not available at the old site. Something that’s especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These measures include:
– individual patient washrooms;
– unique equipment for each treatment area, which reduces the transfer of any ailment through things like infusion pumps and vital signs measures; and
– an increased number of sinks throughout the facility to promote hand washing amongst staff and physicians.
“Our goal is that hospital acquired infections will drop substantially,” Street said.
While beneficial in light of the current world climate, these infection control measures were always going to be part of the new hospital.
“Infection control practices in hospital are always at that level that allow you to respond to things like COVID,” Street said.
“So we are just reinforcing the measures that staff need, all the precautions that staff and physicians need to have in place every day.
“It just gets more elevated in times like this.”
A week into the new hospital being open, Street said that every service is operational.
The first baby was born in the early morning of Aug. 10 and the first surgical procedure, related to the ear, nose and throat, was performed on Aug. 11.
Reid said some parents of babies delivered at the new hospital said they were hoping labour would wait until the new hospital was open.
However, the staff is still working out some kinks that are “small things in the grand scheme of things,” Street said.
There were some technology issues where systems weren’t doing what they should have been and programming that needs to be fine-tuned. The same is true for the thermostat. Adjustments were required as staff realized that some areas of the hospital are cold and others are hot. The hospital also experienced some plumbing issues once it was used full scale for long periods of time.
“We have extra staff on, and our technology department, they’re working 24/7,” Street said. “Our professional practice leads are working 24/7 to support our front line nurses with the new technology and the new systems.
“And our maintenance staff are here to deal with any programming issue because we’ve had a lot of security systems and the mechanical issues.”
He said the hospital is still keeping focused on things that may be unexpected.
“So our teams are really focused on making this experience great for our patients and so far they’ve exceeded everyone’s expectations,” he said.
“So they’ve done a great job.”
