Growing MCH
We’re growing McMaster Children’s Hospital
McMaster Children’s Hospital has received a significant investment from the provincial government of more than $48 million to provide more specialized care to a greater number of children.
This investment – the largest investment in the hospital’s history – has the potential to transform the way pediatric care is accessed and experienced by children, youth, and families in our region and province.
Over twenty-four pediatric programs and services have been identified to grow through this investment, which will:
- Expand and enhance services, spaces and equipment
- Attract additional qualified team members, and add new clinicians and team members
- Reduce wait times for essential children’s health care services such as surgeries, procedures, diagnostic imaging, mental health treatment, and child development and rehabilitation
The timing of this funding is crucial. Many children have been waiting too long for essential care, services, and treatment – some even surpassing the time frames recommended by clinicians. The investment includes some programs of Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre (RJCHC), a McMaster Children’s Hospital site.
A leading regional service hub
As a national leader in pediatric care, we have the necessary expertise and experience to successfully implement this service expansion. Expanding our team and areas of care is crucial to achieve our goals more quickly and getting kids back to being kids sooner.
MCH and RJCHC are also spaces of learning and innovation. Through active engagement with peer hospitals in Ontario, McMaster University and Mohawk College, we can build on research and development from top clinicians and staff and deliver advanced care. This investment will also seed partnerships with local service providers who can offer more options for families in the region.
As a leading regional hub for children’s care, the hospital provides a full range of pediatric services to 2.3 million children. With this planned growth, we can continue to support the individual and complex needs of kids and families in our region for generations to come.
MCH is grateful for this historic investment and opportunity to change lives. This investment was part of a $330M provincial investment to four children’s health care organizations to better support families across the province.
Impact
Patients like Calum, Raiya and Ivan will benefit from program and service expansion.
Making a difference, immediately
We’re growing McMaster Children’s Hospital by addressing challenges across the pediatric health care sector, reducing wait times for children and youth to ensure they receive care within reasonable and recommended timeframes.
Growing MCH is enhancing care and hospital efficiency by supporting innovative approaches to existing and new programs. MCH and RJCHC are expanding and updating spaces to accommodate more surgeries, more advanced treatments, and better recovery.
Check back for regular updates on how we’re growing.
The investment from the government has been transformational. We’re already achieving critical milestones that are decreasing wait times and backlogs, increasing our workforce, and improving outcomes for kids.
Currently, some of our programs have the longest waiting lists in the province. Within a few months, we can already see significant growth within the hospital and improvements in delivering excellent pediatric care.
Within three months, we can already see significant growth within the hospital and improvements to delivering excellent pediatric care.
Seeing the impact
Areas of Growth
Patients at McMaster Children’s Hospital and Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre will benefit from this funding.
Here we grow!
Over the last year, McMaster Children’s Hospital has been actively working on its operational plan to put this investment into action. We have recruited more skilled health care workers and physicians and created more spaces to grow across the two sites.
Around 25 programs, clinics and initiatives have been supported by this investment to grow and meet the capacity demands of the region. All areas of care have begun or completed implementation of their investment updates.
Completed Updates
Emergency Department Rapid Assessment Service
To tackle increased wait times within the Children’s Emergency Department, the team at MCH has created an additional space outside the ED during busy evening hours to provide rapid assessments for less sick patients. This process allows the team to effectively see patients with less severe issues and makes room for critical patients during high-volume times or seasonal surges.
The program has also increased the number of physicians and nurses at peak times to assess and discharge more quickly, improving patient flow.
“Thanks to provincial funding, our teams have been able to explore innovative solutions in emergency care, hire additional staff, and fully use hospital spaces. The hospital’s team of skilled doctors, nurses, and other trained ED professionals are well-equipped to handle all types of emergencies while providing better, more efficient care to help kids get back to being kids.”
– Dr. Angelo Mikrogianakis, Chief of Pediatrics at MCH.
Learn more: New strategies to reduce waits in McMaster Children’s Hospital Emergency Department
Eating Disorders Program Expansion
During the COVID-19 pandemic, MCH and hospitals across Ontario saw a significant increase in the number of youths experiencing eating disorders. The eating disorders program is a critical service for families in our region.
To meet new capacity demands, funding has helped acquire new beds, more space, and more skilled clinicians who will provide care for 35 to 45 additional patients per year.
The investment has also:
- Increased the number of clinicians, social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists, and others, decreasing wait times from initial assessment to treatment
- Increased available support groups and resources for patients and families
- Increased program space that will accommodate additional beds and increased staff
- Provided new equipment for each room to support the work of the team
Overall, the impact of the investment means that more patients are removed from the waiting list, and wait times are decreased so children experiencing an eating disorder can access care when they need it.
This funding has also increased provincial collaboration and medical support to better service patients across Ontario.
Learn more: Eating disorder program grows in response to increased patient needs
Extensive Needs Service
More surgical recovery beds, medicine beds and critical care beds
Learn more: Elizabeth’s dance with scoliosis
Learn more about our Intensive Care program.
Same Day Overnight unit
An innovative approach to hospital operations, the Same Day Overnight (SDO) Unit helps to address waitlists for orthopedic surgeries, general surgery, urology, plastics, and more. Funding has provided six new beds and staffing support, which has made an impact on backlogs across the hospital.
The SDO Unit ensures care for post-surgical pediatric patients is provided in the most appropriate location with the appropriate skill set of care providers based on the procedure, clinical assessment, and length of stay. The unit ensures continued surgical care for kids – regardless of capacity pressures and potential seasonal surges.
This is a successful initiative across multiple sites at HHS, ensuring surgical patients receive surgical care and recovery within a department that is integrated, adaptable and efficient.
Learn more: Quicker surgeries, quicker recoveries from home
Genetic Newborn Screening
The expanded Newborn Screening Initiative allows for improved care of babies who have positive newborn screening results. With increased capacity to produce genetic screens and provide timely follow-up, those newborns who are confirmed to have a diagnosis will have earlier treatment and intervention, ultimately improving the long term outcomes of this patient population.
The introduction of several clinical assistant roles in the Newborn Screening program provides additional support to the staff who are providers of direct clinical care.
Families who have identified infants with diagnoses are able to receive the right care because they understand the situation early. This improved care includes earlier follow-up testing, diagnosis and treatment. Families are supported by a multidisciplinary team, with expertise across many different subspecialty areas.
The investment also is supporting improved data collection and program oversight, which allows the Newborn Screening Ontario program to improve the quality of newborn screening care for all babies across the province. These improvements include reducing the number of babies with “false positive” newborn screening results and improving the consistency of follow-up care for babies across Ontario.
Learn more: Babies get faster care from expanded newborn screening program
Medically Complex Care
McMaster Children’s Hospital (MCH) Complex Care (CC) Program provides holistic care to over 180 children/youth with medical complexity technology dependency (CMCTD). This group of children/youth are the most medically fragile with a high level of acuity and morbidity/mortality, requiring close monitoring, intensive care coordination and communication with caregivers and community partners.
The MCH CC team consists of a respirologist, pediatrician, respiratory therapist, nurse practitioner, dietitian, and has added an additional nurse practitioner and a new dedicated occupational therapist. These new roles has helped build capacity across the team to meet medical care needs, maximized competencies, and helped build a stronger link between service providers.
In addition, the team has focused on improving planning and facilitating transitions to adult and community services or hospital care through community collaboration. This impacts all areas of the hospital, as some patients who are over 18 currently require exceptions to stay in pediatric care when adult transition is not suitable.
Chronic Pain
The pediatric Chronic Pain program is addressing staffing and operational challenges to support the increased rate of new patients and assessments required, improve operational flow, and improve wait times for care.
The team has added a nurse practitioner to increase assessment rates, an occupational therapist, a social worker to help decrease wait times between assessment and care, and a data analyst – all aimed at supporting the increased demand for services. In addition, the program has physically expanded the clinic space with extra rooms.
With the investment, MCH is anticipated to decrease wait times to assessment and diagnosis from time of referral, decrease wait times from diagnosis to first visits, and improve flow.
Learn more: Believing in Katie: MCH team’s mind-body approach to a painful rare condition
Palliative Care
MCH provide palliative care services for children and families through the Quality of Life and Advanced Care Planning team, pronounced “koala”.
Ontario has limited pediatric palliative programs, and MCH serves an entire region. Funding has provided the hospital with the capacity to formalize shifting from hospital-based program to a regional program. This has been a gap in the continuum of care of kids and a significant demand from partners in the community who don’t have this expertise.
Four additional team members increased the capacity to take on additional patients, but also provide more services to meet the core needs of families. Funding also supported to launch of a new peri-natal program.
Overall, the investment in growing this program, in combination with a new pediatric hospice, will position McMaster Children’s Hospital as a national leader in pediatric palliative care, offering the highest quality of children’s palliative care to the greatest number of families possible.
Learn more: Meric was quickly referred to MCH’s pediatric palliative care program
Tele-Resuscitation
Community hospitals and smaller healthcare centres do not have strong expertise in providing care for pediatric populations in urgent and emergent situations. The Pediatric Tele-Resuscitation Program (Peds Tele-Resus) aims to increase capacity at community hospitals and smaller healthcare centres for pediatric resuscitation and care.
The initiative facilitates improved accessibility to highly specialized pediatric emergency care in the community by connecting MCH’s emergency department (ED) with community hospital EDs through real-time two-way videoconferencing. Currently, the program is offered at 10 Niagara Health sites and is expanding across Ontario West Region.
This will benefit the entire region by:
- Potentially reducing demand on transfers requiring inpatient admission
- Improving communication and the ability to observe patient and providers during active care
- Supporting early intervention to prevent patient deterioration
- Improving regional access to care, with care provided at the home hospital, reducing the need for transfers out and care delays
- Creating opportunities for skill development and capacity building in physicians and medical team
Learn more: MCH program brings emergency expertise to community hospitals on demand
Acute and Community Based Mental Health
MCH has experienced a significant increase in demand, severity and complexity within our Child and Youth Mental Health (CYMH) population. This has been a challenge for staff to meet the demand, and the patient and families navigating a complex health care system while waiting for treatment.
The investment has helped MCH build resources and capacity to address current and expected demands through recruiting highly skilled and specialized clinical staff, strategic and innovative planning, and increased capacity.
The CYMH team has increased the Day Treatment capacity, increase family/caregiver interventions/therapy, established strong community partners, resources and system navigation processes to help families access more timely care, and improved efficiency between acute and community-based transitions.
Learn more: Supporting teens with complex mental health needs in the digital era
Hospital updates underway
Black Health
More information to come.
Genetic Enhancement
More information to come.
Video Updates
Part 1: Our McMaster Children’s Hospital is growing, but what does that mean?
Introducing “Growing McMaster Children’s Hospital: A Chat with Bruce Squires” – a multi-part series that breaks down how we’re transforming our hospital to improve pediatric care.
McMaster Children’s Hospital president, Bruce Squires, explains our vision of how we’re transforming this hospital and why this is critical to ensuring we can provide the right care for kids.
He’ll also highlight some exciting changes you’ll see across the spectrum of specialized care we provide to the Hamilton region and beyond. Over the next year, our efforts to expand our hospital will lay the foundation of care that will benefit children for years to come.
Part 2: We’re tackling our surgical waiting list so kids can get the care they need, faster.
Thanks to new operating funding from the provincial government, we’re investing in new equipment, more beds, more staff and improved services. We’ve created additional surgical rooms and scheduled more time for surgeries. Learn about our new same-day overnight service and our new rapid assessment service in the emergency department.
Part 3: We’re expanding services, spaces, and staff to help reduce the backlog of children waiting for care, improve patient flow, and provide better care for kids.
We’re excited to see how this growth will transform the experience for patients and families, including enhancements to our pediatric intensive care unit, additional beds within our surgical departments, and more specialized professionals to address waitlists in our Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic and Eye Clinic.
Part 4: Our hospital is growing, so our teams are too!
To accommodate new and expanded services, we’re hiring nearly 300 nursing, allied health, and clinical support roles across our hospital to help provide essential care for our youngest patients.
Part 5: Focus on Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre
Did you know Our Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre is home to many programs such as extensive needs services, pediatric mental health programs, rehabilitation services, and one of the largest autism programs in Canada? We’re expanding our teams and services across this site through new provincial investments to provide better care. This will help reduce delays for families who need immediate support.
Part 6: Enhancing our specialized programs
Across McMaster Children’s Hospital, our range of specialized programs is growing to provide better comprehensive care for children with mental health challenges, eating disorders, chronic pain and other conditions. Our eating disorder program will now have additional beds, space, and clinicians to see 35 to 45 new patients annually. The chronic pain program is working towards more efficient care and expanded treatment options to improve our patient’s quality of life.
We’re dedicated to helping children and young adults access the best care possible to grow and thrive. Don’t miss the last episode of “Growing McMaster Children’s Hospital: A Chat with Bruce Squires.”