Ontario helps build new Toronto Western Hospital tower
February 9, 2024
By CCE
Rendering courtesy Dialog.
Ontario’s government is contributing $794 million to the University Health Network’s (UHN’s) new $1-billion patient and surgical tower, which will add 20 operating rooms (ORs) and 82 beds to Toronto Western Hospital.
“This hospital has served the province for more than 100 years,” says UHN’s president and CEO, Dr. Kevin Smith. “This investment will help enhance our work in caring for complex neurological and orthopedic cases.”
Dialog is prime consultant for the 15-storey project, providing integrated design services for architecture, clinical planning, interior design, landscape architecture, structural engineering and mechanical and electrical design, in partnership with HH Angus. The tower’s integrated design incorporates insights from surgeons, nurses, patients, clinical managers, environmental services, an Indigenous health program, digital infrastructure teams, pharmacists, infection prevention and control, a laboratory medicine program and medical imaging specialists.
The tower will be built on the southeast corner of Bathurst and Nassau Streets, replacing a surface parking lot. Despite a constrained site, the project will add approximately 380,000 sf across 11 clinical program floors. Dialog has collaborated with UHN’s clinical and support services teams to extend surgical services care from a new pre-operative care unit (POCU) and medical device reprocessing department (MDRD) to a post-anesthetic care unit (PACU), to ensure a continuum of patient care and efficient staff workflow.
The tower will replace a surface parking lot at the Toronto Western Hospital campus. Rendering courtesy Dialog.
“The surgical teams have been diligent in providing input on the design of the new ORs,” says Dr. Tom Forbes, UHN’s surgeon-in-chief, “but they have also provided insights for the design of family waiting areas. They see firsthand the impacts of limited quiet space.”
New facilities will include critical-care beds, single-patient rooms to enhance infection control and image-guided ORs for complex neurosurgical and spinal procedures. UHN plans to increase completed surgeries by more than 20% over the next 10 years to reduce backlogs.
Targeting a 32% energy reduction, the project team will incorporate a high-performance building envelope, light-emitting diode (LED) illumination, low-flow plumbing fixtures, air-side energy recovery ventilation units and UHN’s new wastewater energy transfer (WET) system for heating, cooling and hot water.
Toronto Western Hospital serves as a quaternary care health science centre, a teaching hospital, a community hospital and a research centre affiliated with the University of Toronto (U of T). In particular, it is home to the Krembil Research Institute, which addresses disorders and diseases of the brain and spine.
Groundbreaking is planned for May. The tower is expected to be operational in 2028.
