MUHC to improve accessibility to its public bathrooms
Upgraded facilities at Glen site will better accommodate disabled users
Three and a half years after opening, the McGill University Health Centre superhospital is now carrying out renovations to make its public bathrooms fully accessible to patients and visitors in wheelchairs.
However, the MUHC has only enough funds to upgrade two bathrooms a year. The $1.3-billion superhospital in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce has a total of 72 public bathrooms and, to date, just seven are fully accessible to mobility-challenged individuals.
Dr. Pierre Gfeller, the MUHC’s executive director, told a public meeting of the board of directors on Monday that the private consortium that built the superhospital is under no obligation to upgrade the bathrooms. As a result, Gfeller said, the MUHC will absorb the full cost.
It could cost up to $100,000 for each bathroom upgrade. MUHC officials were unable to provide precise figures on Wednesday.
Lisa Rosati, a former nurse who is physically disabled, decried what she called a “glaring lack of accessibility, with dozens of complaints received both verbally and documented by patients.”
The central users committee of the MUHC — representing patients and families — commissioned a study in 2016 on access to public bathrooms at the superhospital, known as the Glen site.
Tiiu Poldma, a professor in the faculty of architecture at the Université de Montréal, and Eva Kehayia, of the school of physical and occupational therapy at McGill, were hired by the committee to visit the Glen site.
“They were flabbergasted” at what they saw during the visit, Rosati recalled. The researchers found that soap dispensers were too high; baby-changing tables were in the down position, preventing wheelchair movement; emergency-call bells were out of reach; and automatic door openers malfunctioned.
Even today, most bathroom doors are extremely difficult to open and don’t have a button to press for people who are mobilitychallenged, said Mona Arsenault, a member of the patients’ committee.
“I’m not very happy,” said Arsenault, who uses a wheelchair. “The public needs to have dignity when in the hospital, especially in public bathrooms.”
When the MUHC administration discovered that the patients’ committee had commissioned the accessibility study, the head of technical services decided that the hospital network would fund the research entirely. As a result, the patients’ committee no longer has access to the accessibility study.
Confusion also exists as to the exact nature of the bathroom upgrades. On Monday, Gfeller said that the MUHC will upgrade a total of seven bathrooms, and that two will be located in the cancer centre.
But on Tuesday, the public affairs department of the MUHC announced that “to facilitate the accessibility, we have decided to bring certain adjustments to all 72 public bathrooms at the site.”
“These changes include adjusting doorways and adding automation so doors are easier to open, modifying the placement of certain accessories and installing new accessories,” added Gilda Salomone, an MUHC spokesperson.
Salomone acknowledged that “certain bathrooms are not easilyaccessible to frail or mobilitychallenged users .”
Asked how many public bathrooms were now available to people who use wheelchairs, she replied that all were accessible.
But Rosati and Arsenault, who have inspected the public bathrooms, countered that very few are accessible by wheelchair. Arsenault provided a figure of seven out of 72.
Salomone said that “the cadence of further adjustments will be determined according to the available budget, with a minimum of two bathrooms per year.”
She noted that the Glen site was built according to specifications in the Normes de conception sans obstacles by the Régie du bâtiment du Québec. The norms determine the minimum requirements for safety and accessibility.
A longtime member of the patients’ committee deplored the fact that the superhospital was built using such requirements.
“The fact that the bathrooms were designed to meet the minimal requirements for handicapped patients is unacceptable,” said the member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“The MUHC took years of planning, multiple government-led commissions and oversight committees that were responsible to ensure the design of a state-ofthe-art hospital that should have been built to meet the optimal standards of patients’ needs — not the minimum.”