Easy Transition to the New Interior Heart and Surgical Centre

The Interior Heart and Surgical Centre (IHSC) is now open. Dr. Mike Macleod, head of general surgery at Kelowna General Hospital, said during the grand opening on Friday, October 16^th that this new centre will benefit surgeons. “It’s a bigger space and we have more room for advanced equipment that has been put in operating rooms. We have three extra rooms built for future consideration, if the need arises with growth in the community.”

Doors opened to the facility at 5:45 a.m. on Monday, September 28^th and in the first day a baby was born and 10 surgeries were performed, including the first open heart surgery. Since that day more than 20 babies have been delivered and 350 surgeries have been completed.

The previous building was just too small Macleod noted. “The rooms were very small, the equipment was stacked throughout the room, and there was hardly room for staff to move. The hallways were lined from both sides with equipment, with no room for storage. There was a challenge getting patients in and out of the rooms, and back to the recovery rooms. It was hard for nursing students and medical students to be in the room because there wasn’t much space for them to be. There wasn’t room for new equipment.”

With the IHSC opening Macleod said there’s more room for medical students and family practice residents to be in the rooms during operations to learn.

The new building also features the third hybrid operating room in the province. The room is full of advanced medical imaging technology, which means patients don’t have to be moved from the OR to another area for imaging.

Darrell Porubanec spoke during the grand opening about his family’s experience with hybrid operating rooms. His son Trevor required lifesaving surgery in a hybrid operating room and had to travel elsewhere for it, costing the family $6,000 in a month and a half for total expenses. Porubanec thanked the province and the Interior Healthy Authority for investing in the new building, so families like his in the Okanagan don’t have to travel far away for surgeries.

Sixty surgeons, 30 anesthesiologists, as well as other doctors will use the new facility. MacLeod said the transition was easy. “It was very well organized. We had a planned slowdown, so we weren’t trying to do too much as equipment was being moved over and we had a planned ramping up where we started slow to make sure that everyone knew what they were doing and where everything was.”

The province provided $296.3 million to the overall project and $84.7 million was provided by the Central Okanagan Regional Hospital District, for a total of $381 million. The facility itself cost $180 million.

There are three levels now open at the facility. Level one has 42 private pre-op and day surgery recovery bays, family rooms, and meetings spaces. Level two consists of 22 post-anesthetic recovery room bays, eight cardiac surgery intensive care unit private rooms, as well as 15 new operating rooms. Level three is the medical device reprocessing department.

The final level will open in the spring of 2016 and will be home to the new maternity unit.