Smooth move to Nouveau CHUM
After nearly 110 years of treating some of Montreal’s poorest patients — including the homeless and drug addicts — St-Luc Hospital closed for good on Sunday.
But this is not a sad tale. It’s a story of rebirth, for all of St-Luc’s patients were transferred to Canada’s newest and most modern hospital next door, the $2-billion Nouveau CHUM on St-Denis St. at Viger Ave. Each patient was assigned a private room with a floorto-ceiling window.
Among the patients was Ophélia Mathieu, born two days earlier in St-Luc’s birthing centre. Ophélia was sleeping soundly, cradled in her mother Fatima Radics’s arms, as a hospital worker pushed mom in a wheelchair from the old hospital to the new one shortly after 7 a.m.
Given they were the first patients to be admitted to the CHUM superhospital, mother and daughter were treated as if they were celebrities, with staff taking photos.
Radics, a Montreal singer and songwriter, took all the attention in stride, smiling happily.
A total of 113 patients — including four from the intensive-care unit — were transferred to the Nouveau CHUM by 10:15 a.m., two hours earlier than expected. The move was an internal one, since St-Luc and the Nouveau CHUM are connected to each other, and patients made the quick trip through a basement passageway.
“It’s sort of a funny thing, but it was quiet, very quiet,” said Patrick Moriarty, president of Health Care Relocations, the Ontario company in charge of the move.
“I do this for a living, but it’s amazing to see one facility go to sleep and another facility come awake in an instant. That new facility is a hospital already, and it’s great.”
The Nouveau CHUM’s emergency room opened at 5 a.m., and by mid-morning had already treated eight patients. At 12:30 p.m., the new birthing centre reported its first birth: a boy delivered via caesarean section.
More than 600 CHUM employees, 30 volunteers and a crew of 100 from Health Care Relocations took part in Sunday’s move. Roland Brouillette, a CHUM volunteer for 25 years, handed patients gift blankets as they entered the new hospital.
“The patients were not at all traumatized, not at all,” Brouillette said. “On the contrary, some were even happy because they knew they were going to a new state-of-the-art hospital.”
Danielle Fleury, president and associate director of the CHUM, said Sunday’s move couldn’t have gone better.
“Everything went much faster,” Fleury said. “Certainly, doing everything from the inside is much easier. We were expecting more patients, but in the last few days we were able to discharge more patients than planned.”
Health Care Relocations must still carry out two more moves of patients. On Sunday, Nov. 5, the company will transfer about 100 patients from Hôtel-Dieu on StUrbain St. — North America’s oldest hospital, founded in 1659 — to the Nouveau CHUM, a complex of office-like towers with 20 of its 25 storeys above ground.
And on Sunday, Nov. 26, the last phase of moving will be carried out with the transfer of about 175 patients from Notre-Dame Hospital on Sherbrooke St., across from Lafontaine Park. The contract for the three moves is $11 million, said Irène Marcheterre, director of communications for the CHUM.
In preparation for Sunday’s move, the CHUM ramped down the number of clinical activities, including elective surgeries. That number will start going back up gradually in the coming weeks.