Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare in Windsor is submitting a functional plan to the Ministry of Health for a mental health bed expansion project.
Work over the past 18 months has resulted in a submission that includes block diagrams of the building and physical space need to support the programs and services related to this expansion.
The project calls for 68 acute mental health bed expansion, urgent psychiatric crisis service in the Tayfour Tower, providing urgent/emergent service and crisis service, relocation and renovation of inpatient rehabilitative care, diagnostic Imaging - adding ultrasound and CT Services - in a new expanded space, and renal service.
The inpatient mental health bed expansion will allow HDGH to grow and create a mental health and addictions system for the community, offering all hospital-based mental health services at one location to improve access and patient care.
Dr. Andrea Steen, Chief of Staff and Vice President of Medical Affairs, Mental Health & Addictions and Quality & Performance says this is a significant step in the process.
"Once you get the money to go forward with this stage of planning, we really do have the government support on this so now it's going forward with our proposal," says Dr. Steen. "As Bill (Marra) was saying, we definitely will get some back and forth and some questions but the hope will be, we'll answer those questions and we will continue to move forward."
She says the beds are expected to open between the next seven to eight years.
"We have to make some moves for the rehab beds to the back before we can start to build out the beds here," says Dr. Steen. "So I mean I always hope that things will go a little quicker and I think it depends on political will sometimes but the hope will be that for sure within these next seven years everything will be functioning and open."
Bill Marra, Chief Executive Officer of Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, says it's a significant milestone for the community.
He says it's a significant system wide investment.
"Take yourself a few years into the future when the beds are open here, we have a dedicated emergency for mental health and addictions," says Marra. "This provides diversion from ERs at Windsor Regional which improves outcomes there. This improves patient outcomes because it's a single point of entry."
In April 2021, an inpatient bed expansion for Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) was part of Infrastructure Ontario's Market Update.
At that time, the announcement outlined $60-billion in funding for 41 infrastructure projects across the province.
The 68 mental health beds are being transferred from the Windsor Regional Hospital's Ouellette Campus to Hotel-Dieu.
HDGH serves as the regional provider of tertiary mental health care, a range of community based mental health programs inclusive of the downtown Windsor Crisis and Mental Wellness centre which houses the urgent assessment centre for mental health and addiction and is the lead agency for child and youth mental health for the region.
— with files from AM800's Rob Hindi