Interior finishing underway at MUHC superhospital
Construction of $1.3-billion project is on time and on budget, officials say
Construction of the $1.3-billion superhospital of the McGill University Health Centre is now more than 80 per cent complete, with the work proceeding on time and on budget, say MUHC officials.
Workers are now focusing on finishing details of the interior, especially the 500 single-patient rooms, many of which will have panoramic views of Westmount and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
Those rooms — each measuring 25 square metres — will represent a major advance in medical care from the current MUHC standard. At present, two patients often share rooms at the Montreal General and Royal Victoria hospitals.
The older rooms also don’t have sinks next to the doors for staff to wash their hands and prevent the spread of deadly germs like C. difficile and staph aureus. In contrast, each new room at the superhospital will not only have a sink next to the door, but a spacious bathroom with a shower in the corner. An alcove with a large reclining couch will be located next to the window for visitors, and a flat-screen TV will hang on a wall across from the patient’s bed.
“These (more spacious) rooms were designed in such a way so as to bring the medical equipment to the patient instead of the other way around,” said Imma Franco, the MUHC’s associate director of planning, during a tour of the superhospital on Wednesday.
Many rooms will overlook the commuter train line that runs parallel to de Maisonneuve Blvd. Acoustic specialists carried out noise and vibration tests to determine whether medical instruments might be adversely affected and whether recovering patients might be irritated, and concluded that there would be no negative impact, Franco said.
“These are going to be very quiet rooms for patients and their families,” Franco added this week, standing in a room painted a mustard yellow bathed in the light of a setting autumn sun.
More than 2,000 workers are still on the site. Drywall sheets have been mounted, plastering has been carried out and workers are laying the floors and installing drop ceilings. Outside, most asphalt roads have been paved and concrete sidewalks poured.
The intensive-care unit has been completed, as well. Its layout allows for maximum efficiency, with its medical-intervention rooms located side-by-side in a long row. Windows have been cut into the walls of each room to allow doctors and nurses to have better views of what’s going on around them in the ICU.
Although the superhospital is scheduled to open in the summer of 2015, the so-called provisional acceptance is less than 11 months away. At that point, much of the medical equipment will be installed.
Meanwhile, the Montreal General, which is also part of the MUHC’s network, is undergoing renovations and eventually all its patient rooms will be single, as well.
Despite the sprawling scale of the superhospital, it will actually have less square footage than the Royal Victoria. Many doctors won’t have their offices in the superhospital, which won’t have enough space to accommodate some outpatient clinics now available at the Montreal General and Royal Vic.
This reality has become a logistical nightmare for MUHC planners, who are desperately seeking new “corridors of service,” such as clinics in the community.