Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) is celebrating a significant milestone.
The hospital unveiled its new cardiac catheterization lab Monday morning at the Ouellette Campus.
The new $37-million lab is located on the second floor and will provide additional life-saving critical care treatments to heart attack patients in the community.
The new lab is over 17,000 square feet of space and includes a second catheterization table.
The first cardiac catheterization table became operational in 1997 at the Ouellette Campus and has been located in the basement.
Chief Nursing Executive and Vice-President of Cardiology Nicole Krywionek says up until this point, the hospital has been operating with one cardiac cath lab table.
She says the hospital has been doing exceptional things with the one table.
“What this means is there’s going to be fewer interruptions in care,” she says. “Up to this point when you only have one cardiac cath, if an emergency comes in, we might even have to go so far as to take that patient off the table, so this means that we have that second cath lab table to deal with emergencies, see more patients, and even explore newer technologies.”
WRH has been the only hospital in Ontario with a cardiac catheterization program using just one table and sees around 2,000 patients a year.
Krywionek says in the past some patients were sent to other hospitals for care.
“In the past if there were two emergencies at the same time, the hospital would have had to divert this hospital either to the states or to London; a lot of times it was to the states, and that costs the taxpayers money; it costs our community money, and so we’re avoiding that by making this investment,” says Krywionek.
She believes being ‘co-located’ will be one of the biggest improvements.
“When we had the cath lab in the basement, we were actually transporting patients throughout the hospital after their procedure to be cared for in a separate location,” she says. “So this will impact closeness of the staff; the staff and the patients will be closer to the doctors doing the procedures, so they have more in-time communication.”
WRH says “it can complete more vital cardiac procedures with the addition of a second catheterization table to connect more people to the care they need sooner, reduce wait times for both urgent and elective procedures, and ensure timely access to essential services in the region.”
In early 2023, the Ford government announced a $30-million commitment for both the second cath lab table and the cath lab renovation project.
The Windsor Regional Hospital Foundation raised $7 million for the project.
Construction on the new lab started in September 2024.
The new lab will see its first patient next week.