PRHC Highest Priority Investments                           

Our health is the most precious gift we have. Those of us who don’t need healthcare on any given day certainly know someone who does – often someone close to us, too often with serious health issues. For them and for ourselves we all want the best health care, as quickly as possible, in our local hospital.

The community, through the PRHC Foundation is a vital partner in bringing more services and more effective treatments to our community.  While we have benefited from increased government funding for additional procedures and to reduce waiting lists for important tests and surgeries, community support is essential to invest in new technology and medical equipment. As PRHC grows and opportunities to deliver better care are developed, with your support we can transform patient care at our hospital for the benefit of ourselves, our families and our friends and neighbours.

Our community, in partnership with the government funding, can have a direct impact on the quality of care and range of services at our hospital by supporting the following priority investments:

    

Investment	Estimated cost	Patient benefit
Emurgency Campaign: raising $1.5 million for Urgent Care Equipment  The first investments we wish to make are:
ECG Machines	$36,300 each * 4 = $145,200	ECGs are ordered for patients with symptoms such as difficulty in breathing, chest pain, fainting, palpitations or when someone can feel that their own heart beat is abnormal. Having additional and new instruments will allow for better response time and more timely results for physicians to administer life saving treatments. Approximately 33,000 tests are performed each year
OR (operating room) tables and stretchers	10 at $6,930 each 2 at $49,500 each	Additional stretchers are required to allow for more surgeries and reduce delays between surgeries when stretchers are not available. Approximately 110 surgeries done per day in our 12 Operating Rooms. New models are equipped with electronic controls for proper positioning and alignment of the patient. Investing in new equipment will improve the timeliness of surgeries
Laboratory Coagulation System	$198,000	Coagulation tests are ordered to determine the blood-clotting status of a patient. More than 60,000 tests are completed each year to assess patients with unexpected bleeding, blood clots, miscarriage or for risk assessment before major surgery. With the increase in patients due to growth of our clinics, surgeries and treatments, a new system will provide faster turnaround for test results with enhanced reliability and quality.
OR Joint Surgery tools	2 at $27,500 each	Approximately 600 total joint procedures are completed at PRHC each year. Investing in 2 ‘stryker power saw’ systems will allow PRHC to do more joint surgeries each day, allowing our patients to regain mobility and freedom from pain sooner.
Code Blue Defibrillator Carts	$18,700	20% of the patients arriving in the ER have life threatening or potentially life threatening illness.  The code blue cart and the defibrillator would be used on these or any patient of any age who requires immediate intervention to save their life. With the growing number  of patients in a larger hospital, we need an additional cart to respond promptly
Ventilator for Intensive Care Unit	$43,000	To enable the best care for increasingly ill patients from new strains of flu we require a special ventilator for patients with severe respiratory distress
Anesthesia Machines	2 at $165,000 each	Used daily in the Operating Room to deliver and monitor anesthesia gases. Replacing these 10 yr old machines with the newest technology will allow PRHC to respond quickly to trauma cases and emergency surgeries while monitoring a fragile patient’s condition as closely as possible
Cancer Care Campaign - a $2.5 million campaign to enhance early detection, improve treatment and bring care closer to home
Site preparation for a radiation facility	$1.2 million	To house a radiation facility at PRHC, to treat 400 patients per year who have breast or prostate cancer and currently travel to Oshawa for up to 40 treatments. This will enable some patients to receive care who currently cannot afford or manage the travel, and allow others to receive greater support from their families by being closer to home for this life-saving treatment
Coverslipper and Slide Processor	$114,000	Equipment in the lab to preserve tissues for optimal viewing quality, enhancing speed and accuracy of diagnosis
Flexible endoscopes	18 @ $40,000 each = $720,000	6 new scopes are required each year for the next three years to diagnose and perform biopsies for colon and lung cancer

 

Safer, more effective treatment
Anesthesia machines (surgery)	11 at $165,000 each	Used daily in the Operating Room to deliver and monitor anesthesia gases. Replacing these 10 yr old sophisticated machines with the newest technology will allow PRHC to continue to increase the number of surgeries performed, ensure patients receive the minimum amount of anesthetic required and be carefully monitored for side-effects, and integrate information with the electronic charting of the patient record

 

Opportunities to improve care
Pharmacy Medication Order Management System	$88,000	This hardware and software system will enable medication orders to be transmitted and verified electronically from the nursing unit to the pharmacy. The pharmacy processes more than 2000 prescriptions each day. Implementing this system will reduce risk of error and speed up processing of the prescription to provide faster treatment for the patient
Automatic floor scrubbers	4 at $22,000 each	To reduce hospital acquired infections, PRHC has invested in staff to increase the cleaning of patient rooms and treatment areas. Purchasing 4 walk-behind floor scrubbers will permit faster and more efficient cleaning of corridors and large areas in the hospital to permit greater attention to cleaning patient areas.