Building For The Future
Lakeridge Health is on a journey of transformation to become a comprehensive regional system of care for Durham Region and beyond. Our aim is to deliver safe, high quality and seamless health care as well as an excellent patient experience for all those who come to us for support, compassion and care. Our key priority is to improve access to health care services most used by the communities we serve.
What is a Master Plan?
The Master Plan builds on the Master Program information to create a blueprint for construction and development of the facilities needed to deliver the programs and services. It involves evaluating the condition and capabilities of our existing buildings, defining the long-term development strategies, and outlining the sequencing of site development to support the future delivery of acute care services.
Durham Region needs a new hospital. And a new hospital is a key capital investment in Lakeridge Health’s Master Plan. It takes approximately 10 years to build a new hospital, so Lakeridge Health needs to move forward now.
Community Involvement
Building any type of plan for the future requires first and foremost the involvement of the community. From January through April 2018, we reached out to businesses and people in the community to hear your thoughts on how we could shape the face of health care for the Durham Region. A wide range of community members and organizations were invited to participate from across the region. Community members took part in a range of surveys, interviews, meetings and focus groups, telephone town halls and other engagement methods. Participants were asked to share their opinions and feedback on:
- What Lakeridge Health does to provide health care that should be continued
- Barriers to accessing Lakeridge Health services
- What Lakeridge Health can do to provide health care differently far into the future
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it was worth over 4,000 interactions – the number of interactions we had with Durham residents during community consultations across the region. Findings were consolidated and grouped into four themes:
- Establish Lakeridge Health’s Role in the Community Services- Be the connector for the community.
- Improve Services and How they are Experienced - Tailor care to the individual patient as well as diverse populations in Durham Region.
- Better Information Sharing - Improve health IT.
- Infrastructure Needs - Fix the buildings, make them modern, accessible and inviting.
We used stakeholder feedback to inform Lakeridge Health’s Master Planning process that will help shape hospital-based health services for everyone in the Durham Region. Master Planning involves evaluating the condition and capabilities of our existing buildings, defining long-term development strategies and outlining the rollout of site development to support future delivery of acute care services. None of this would be possible without the feedback of the people directly using and affected by our services.