Hybrid operating room in Fredericton is expected to shorten waits, help recruitment
Chalmers Foundation will need to raise $4.3 million for the project
A hybrid operating room planned for Fredericton will be the first of its kind in New Brunswick, providing advanced imaging to assist surgeons as they work, supporters say.
The Chalmers Foundation has to raise the $4.3 million for needed equipment, but the province has agreed to support the plan as well.
The new operating room will cost an estimated $3.3 million a year to operate.
The room is "really a big win" for patients, said Dr. Claus Schaus, who was a vascular surgeon at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital until he retired in January.
The goal is to have the hybrid operating room "up and running in a year and a half," Schaus said.
Provincial spokesperson Sean Hatchard said the timing will depend on the foundation's fundraising.
"Once the money is raised, the procurement process will begin."
The operating room will be equipped to allow doctors to clearly see issues and operate on them in the same space.
Now, doctors have to have patients wheeled out of the operating room for imaging and then returned.
The "hybrid" in the name means the room can function as a place for imaging and minimally invasive procedures as well as regular open surgery.
Dr. Elna Hauman. the president of the physician staff organization and an emergency room physician at the Chalmers, said the room will help treat more patients.
"I just feel so much relief knowing that our patients will be able to access the care that they need at the time that they need it," Hauman said.
The hybrid room for Fredericton was proposed two years ago, and the hospital foundation committed to raising the money for it at the time.
The Progressive Conservative government wasn't in favour, however, and suggested Saint John Regional Hospital install a hybrid room instead. The new Liberal government has taken a different view.
"We're proud to collaborate with the Chalmers Foundation to make this long-awaited hybrid operating room a reality," Premier Susan Holt said in a new release.
Charles Diab, the CEO of the Chalmers Foundation. said the new room "should shorten wait times for procedures" because doctors can "do a lot more with the equipment being there."
The space is ready for the equipment and the new room could be ready to go within two months if it were dropped off today, Diab said, but the foundation is "starting from scratch" on the ambitious fundraising goal.
"We've never really been confronted with such a large amount to raise for a single piece of equipment, but we are excited."
Schaus said Saint John will still get a hybrid operating room, but renovations there are years behind the Chalmers.
He said the new room at the Chalmers will take some pressure off the hospital's interventional radiology suite, an X-ray room with high resolution imaging equipment usually occupied by a radiologist. That suite is "already at maximum capacity."
Hauman also said a hybrid operating room will allow general surgeons and urologists to perform minimally invasive procedures that aren't available at the hospital now.
The Chalmers currently doesn't have a vascular surgeon following Schaus's retirement. But a hybrid operating room will help with the recruitment of a new surgeon or two which he plans to help get started, he said.
"I've certainly made the commitment that I would be available for a new surgeon to come to the city, hopefully two surgeons, that I would be there as a mentor," Schaus said.
Diab said prospective surgeons who are still in university are practising on a hybrid operating room "type of equipment right now."
"It's going to attract, help us to recruit, help us to retain because they need that piece of equipment. They don't want to go back into sort of the old way of doing things."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Shift and Info AM Fredericton