Project Stitch: Making strides toward our goal
A day surgery is truly ideal for children as it offers the least disruption to their normal routine since there is no overnight hospital stay.
Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in the demand for pediatric day surgeries and diagnostic procedures at CHEO, resulting in longer wait lists. Many parents in our community know all too well the stress of having to wait for their child’s elective surgery or diagnostic testing. Such delays can impact their child’s medical outcome, and their ability to grow, develop and learn.
To remedy this situation, CHEO is preparing to move and reorganize its day surgery and recovery units and purchase state-of-theart equipment, all to better care for the children and youth in our community.
This ‘smart health’ undertaking is a $5 million fundraising initiative led by the CHEO Foundation and fondly referred to as Project Stitch — It will allow CHEO to perform up to 1,500 additional procedures and surgeries per year, and will reduce wait times by as much as three months.
Thanks to our generous community we have about $2 million raised at this point. But we still need to raise $3 million to pay for these renovations and the purchase of much-needed surgical equipment.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Currently, patients must take around 179 steps to travel between the waiting room and the day surgery operating suite. That’s a long walk in a very public corridor for little feet that may be nervous about taking such a trek to have a bobo fixed or thoroughly investigated. Thanks to Project Stitch this will change very soon!
By better utilizing the existing space in a new, clever, way and by modernizing its facilities, Project Stitch will increase CHEO’s capacity to perform surgeries by 20 per cent, which means that more kids will feel better much faster!
AS PART OF PROJECT STITCH, CHEO WILL BE:
Moving the waiting area much closer to the surgical suites;
Adding quiet rooms (for those who require sedation before investigative procedures);
Increasing privacy — as patients won’t need to trek the hallways in their hospital gowns on their way to the surgical suite;
Renovating and combining the day care surgery and post-anesthetic care units;
Expanding the number of patient recovery areas from nine to 12;
Incorporating the 11 day surgery rooms closer to the OR and anesthesia, and adding four new rooms;
Building two new procedure rooms to support procedures like gastrointestinal endoscopies, dental procedures, bone biopsies and other diagnostic procedures;
Purchasing essential state-ofthe-art surgical equipment.
ABOUT THE INCREASE IN DEMAND
One of the reasons which explain the increase in demand for day surgeries or investigative procedures is directly linked to a 69 per cent increase in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) outpatient clinic visits. IBD is now the most common and disabling chronic gastrointestinal illness affecting Canadian children and youth. Part of this increase is explained by heightened awareness and improved diagnostic techniques.
With Project Stitch the hospital will create two new procedure rooms dedicated to diagnostic procedures such as gastrointestinal endoscopy. In doing so, it will free up surgery suites to enable more surgeries to take place and thus reduce overall surgical wait times.
To learn more about Project Stitch and to help reduce surgical wait times and the number of steps a child needs to take on their way to surgery, please visit www. cheofoundation.com. With a little more help from generous people like you, we can raise the remaining $3 million needed to make this project come to life for our community’s children and youth!
Project Stitch is a ‘smart health’ undertaking that will allow CHEO to reduce surgical wait times by as much as three months.