Toronto's historical hospital due for upgrade

Toronto East General Hospital was opened in 1929 and has been in continual operation ever since, located at 825 Coxwell Avenue in the capital of Ontario, the hospital is a community teaching hospital and has a bed capacity of 470. It treated over 60,000 people in its emergency room last year and provided in-patient care to over 19,000 people.

The facility is therefore a vital part of the emergency response and medical care landscape of the city, but the hospital is outdated and in need of a $210 million makeover that will see the hospital almost double in size, while the entire existing building will also be redeveloped.

The Master Plan for redevelopment that was submitted to the Toronto City Council for approval in July of 2010 was the first of its kind in the history of the hospital, which has delivered over 300,000 babies throughout its lifetime.

However, according to Toronto news reports, and promotional material released by Toronto East General Hospital, the facility has been expanded and had additions built since it was first opened in 1929. Eleven extensions have been constructed, but the hospital’s leadership have told Toronto news media that the various parts of the hospital lack any sense of integration with one another on both a functional and architectural level.

There is a sense of disconnection then, which must be overcome, as well as a range of other problems that have arisen with age. When the hospital was first built and then greatly expanded in the 1940s, it was never intended to accommodate the number of patients it currently does.

Rob Devitt, the CEO of Toronto East General Hospital, has admitted that the hospital’s current arrangement is overdue for an upgrade. He told local Toronto news provider, Inside Toronto that the patient beds in wards A and B weren’t adequately separate for infectious disease control and that some beds actually have to be moved to make way for the removal of other beds, such as those located by a window.

In addition, patients who do become infected with a contagious disease have to be relocated to isolated parts of the emergency room, which is itself over-crowded, because the hospital does not have enough private rooms. Also, of the hospitals several dozen washrooms, only ten percent are wheel-chair accessible.

The new Master Plan, which is planned to be completed within the next 20 years, will therefore address these problems, in large part by demolishing and rebuilding many of the narrow rectangular extensions that were made to the hospital during the 1940s, when building techniques and expectations were different to what can be done in modern times.

One such example of modern technology is the ability to build further underground and the Toronto East General Hospital plans to develop a large multi-storey underground parking lot for visitors and patients. At present, many visitors to the hospital have to park on surrounding residential streets, while the staff parking lot is so over-occupied it carriers a two year waiting list.

The Master Plan for the redevelopment project calls for many of the hospital’s extensions made in the 1940s to be destroyed, because renovation would be unpractical, given the vast degree of redevelopment needed. The older buildings on Coxwell, for example, are narrow with low-ceilings and built to a centre-corridor design that severely limits the use of space in all the rooms.

Urban Strategies and E.R.A Architects, the firms brought in to help prepare the Master Plan, have examined each of the 1940s and 20s-era buildings and agree that none of them are noteworthy enough to be considered of importance in terms of heritage status and the hospital is not listed as being part of the city’s heritage listing.

The government of Ontario will fund 90% of the redevelopment work, while Toronto East General Hospital will need to raise the rest, in addition to paying for the purchase of all the new equipment for the new wards and departments to be created.

It is estimated that this will amount to an outlay of around $55 million, a staggering amount for one single hospital and so Toronto East General Hospital has appealed to the community for help in fund raising efforts. There is a remaining $10 million still needed.

Hospital CEO Rob Devitt has emphasised that the hospital is not expanding its capacity, but rather enhancing the overall level of treatment and care already provided to the current patient load.