Visiting the Emergency Department is a stressful experience for patients at the best of times, but for children, the impact can be even more dramatic. 

An innovative approach to ‘fast track’ children and their families from the ED to a pediatric clinic—called Paedlink—has been so successful since its implementation at The Scarborough Hospital’s General campus in 2007 that it was recently expanded to TSH’s Birchmount campus.

PaedLink has also helped reduce ED wait times by 42 per cent, to less than three hours from an average four-and-a-half hours.

Walking through the surgical suites at the General campus, Dr. Michael Chapman compares the operating rooms to an old car.

“We’ve changed the tires, we’ve changed the chassis, and we’ve even put in air conditioning. But our four cylinder is having trouble keeping up with the 12 cylinders. If we had a 12-cylinder car, we would continue to lead,” he says.

Recently, the Corporate Chief of Surgery shared his analogy with Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews while taking her on a tour of the ORs. He, and Patient Care Director of Surgery, Nurallah Rahim, pointed out the inefficiencies, the challenges and the hospital’s vision for a modern surgical pavilion that would better serve our community.

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