Chatham-Kent’s hospital has opened a newly renovated unit as part of the ongoing efforts to revitalize its Wallaceburg site.
The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance celebrated the opening of the Medical Daycare in its new space with a ribbon cutting on Thursday.
The daycare unit, which was formally a cafeteria, offers outpatient appointments for iron infusions, blood product transfusions, phlebotomy, and minor procedures. The new space will also allow the hospital to expand services to include urology clinics and small procedure surgical clinics.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we actually turned our ambulatory care area into the potential for an inpatient unit and we moved medical daycare to Wallaceburg at that time,” said CKHA President and CEO Lori Marshall.
Marshall said it was then that CKHA realized there was a need for a medical daycare at both sites.
“From a staffing perspective, it’s much easier to monitor a department like this than a long hallway with individual doors,” she said. “This is a much more efficient space because it does allow for the comfortable chairs for people who are here for an infusion, [and] it allows them to socialize if they want… It’s a nice comforting place to receive care.”
To date, there have been over 1,500 patient visits to the Medical Daycare in Wallaceburg since April 1, 2022.
One of those patients is local resident George Vieira, who regularly attends both hospital sites for iron transfusions after suffering a blot clot in 2020.
“I think people in Chatham-Kent need to realize how lucky we are,” said Vieira. “I never realized how hard hospital staff work, until I spent five months in the hospital. And it’s not just the nurses and it’s not just the doctors, it’s the people that clean the rooms, it’s the RPNs — it’s everybody that works in the hospital. It really is a team.”
The provincial government provided a total of $780,000 over two years for the renovation through its Health Infrastructure Renewal Fund.
