Fundraising for mega-hospital kicks into gear

With plans for the $2-billion megahospital poised to move forward, the “green light” has been handed down to community groups looking to raise funds in support of the planned state-of-the-art acute care facilities.

“We were not aggressively fundraising because we wanted to be certain we were moving ahead before we agreed for them to do this,” Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj said on Saturday. “We didn’t want to see people get involved, raise funds and be in a situation where we had to return money.

“Now everything can move ahead. We can do this now. It’s no longer if (the mega-hospital will be built), but a matter of when.”

A Run for Windsor event Saturday at Windsor’s Riverfront Plaza, backed by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, was essentially the first of many fundraising events that are anticipated to kick into high gear with the mega-hospital plan officially moving forward.

The Muslim group has pledged it will raise $500,000 over 10 years, primarily through Run for Windsor events, with its focus on supporting the new Urgent Care Centre to be constructed under the mega-hospital plan on the former Grace hospital site off Crawford Avenue near University Avenue West.

About 600 participants took part in their group’s first fundraising run which it expects to stage annually on Mother’s Day weekends over each of the next several years, said organizer Pasha Qureshi.

He moved to Windsor in 2014 after living in several cities both in Canada and elsewhere.

“When I first came here, a friend told me they had to go elsewhere in Ontario for heart surgery,” Qureshi said.

“I chose Windsor to live and it’s being promoted as a retirement community. I visited the hospital myself and realized it’s substandard and we do need a new facility.”

His group’s motto is “love for all” and helping the community any way possible, he said.

“Whatever the community needs, we will do that,” Qureshi said.

“Under our motto and faith, we want to help all people in Windsor and Essex County.”

While provincial and municipal governments will fund infrastructure under the mega-hospital plan, the Windsor Regional Hospital Foundation has established a goal of raising $150 million over 10 years to purchase equipment for inside the new facilities, Musyj said.

New ultrasound machines, CT scanners, MRI machines are just examples of what the fundraising efforts will help provide in the new acute care centres.

Much of the hospital’s current equipment will be outdated or need to be replaced when the time comes to move into the new mega-hospital sites, he added.

Presently, Windsor Regional Hospital already spends between $10 million to $12 million annually to either refurbish or replace hospital equipment, Musyj said.

He was very appreciative how the Muslim-backed group has specifically identified funds it will raise to be spent at the new Urgent Care Centre.

“It’s fantastic what they are doing,” Musyj said. “I was there this morning and there was a lot of excitement. We are being approached by many individual organizations to do exactly what happened today.

“There is a lot of (fundraising) work ahead of us, but we can do this now.”

The mega-hospital plan calls for replacement of Windsor Regional’s two aging buildings with a state-of-the-art acute care hospital to be constructed on vacant lands near Windsor’s airport.

The plan also includes moving 60 acute care mental health beds to the Tayfour site and having Hotel-Dieu Grace take over Windsor Regional’s Ouellette Avenue site for outpatient mental health services and chronic disease management.

Completion of the project is estimated to be seven to 10 years away with construction unlikely to start for three or four years.