‘Our Hearts At Home’ campaign aims to bring cardiovascular services to northern Ontario – CBC.ca

A new fundraising initiative in northern Ontario aims to provide cardiovascularsurgery and services to over 1,000 people each year.

The goal of the Our Hearts At Homecampaign is to raise $14 million to pay for the necessary surgical equipment and expansion of operating rooms at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC).

"This is incredible. This is such a huge impact," said campaign chair Paul Fitzpatrick, describing a new cardiovascularcentre that will offer procedures, such as bypass surgery and aortic aneurysm repair, to patients from Kenora to Sault Ste. Marie.

"What's astonishing for me, getting into the program, is that cardiac surgery services are provided in Winnipeg and Sudbury and nowhere in between, so we are [one of] the most isolated area in all of Canada in terms of having to travel to get this kind of critical service."

People in northwestern Ontario needing these operations are routinely airlifted 1,500 kilometres to be treated in Toronto, Hamilton or London. Their convalescence can stretch to several weeks to ensure they are healthy enough to make the return flight, meaning they are often off work longer and are paying for a family member to stay in a hotel.

Providing that treatment closer to where people livereduces the cost to the system, and improves patients recovery, said Fitzpatrick.

"When you're having a cardiac surgery procedure, there's a lot of anxiety and the comfort of knowing you can stay at home, have your family and friends surround you, not having to worry about the cost and whether you can afford it and then knowing you get to convalesce at home, in a relatively short period, it's just going to take the stress level off patients."

The expansion of cardiovascular services at the TBRHSC is "extremely big", he said. "This requires all-new surgical equipment, repurposing of operating rooms and expansion of cardiac beds because the patients that have the surgery will have after-surgery care in hospital, but it will be less time. They'll get to go home a lot sooner because they don't have a flight to worry about."

The services will be provided through a partnership between the TBRHSC and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, part of Toronto's United Health Network, giving the three surgeons in Thunder Bay "access to the leading surgeons in the world," said Fitzpatrick.

The total cost of the new cardiac centre is $60 million, he said, noting that "with any medical expansion, the community is responsible for 100 per cent of the equipment costs and 10 per cent of the construction costs."

The Our Hearts at Home campaign has been quietly running for three years and by the time it was publicly launched on October 16, donations from municipalities and businesses including $1 million from The Paterson Foundation amounted to nearly$11.5 million, with a gala event on October 19 generating $238,000.

The new TBRHSC cardiovascularcentre could open in 2022, following the completion of the renovations and new construction at the hospital.

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'Our Hearts At Home' campaign aims to bring cardiovascular services to northern Ontario - CBC.ca