The population of a small city moves in and out of its three campuses every single day: volunteers, students, staff and medical professionals. It’s renowned for groundbreaking research, clinical trials and innovative treatments for devastating diseases. It delivers world-class care to a region of 1.3 million people.
It’s The Ottawa Hospital, and last year it cared for more patients than any other Canadian hospital.
Many people already know that The Ottawa Hospital is the place to go with a broken arm or if you get sick, but there is much more to the story.
“I wish people knew more about what happens inside these walls,” says Dr. Jack Kitts, President and CEO of The Ottawa Hospital. “What they would learn is that there is an exceptional staff committed to the best patient care possible.”
The Ottawa Hospital has a mission. It’s a “tri-care” mission which includes the highest possible standards of health care and it’s a mission that goes far beyond what a regular hospital visitor might expect.
“Every hospital cares for patients. Period. Full stop,” says Dr. Kitts. “Not every hospital can treat the most complex, complicated patients with the most difficult illnesses and injuries. It’s more than just the doctors and nurses … it’s the top doctors, professors, researchers. The whole package.”
Although the No. 1 focus at TOH is the patient experience, its role as a community health care provider extends much further. TOH is a learning institution which has dedicated itself to educating the physicians, nurses and other health professionals and performing cutting edge research with “world-first” clinical trials fuelled by the latest technologies and treatments.
“We care for patients with the emphasis on the most complex, sickest patients there are,” says Dr. Kitts. That’s the first part of the TOH tri-care mission. “The second part of our mission is that we are a learning organization, and we educate future health professionals, and the third part is we do research. Research that will make a difference not only in the future but research that actually impacts patients today.
“This is research that actually matters to regular people.”
New technologies and treatments that elevate the standard of care to a new level are a major part of The Ottawa Hospital story, but unless you happen to be a patient, you may never hear about them. Take, for example, the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System: it leaves no scar, and allows surgeons to remove cancers that are inoperable or otherwise difficult to reach. Or the personalized medicine via the molecular oncology lab, which is about to radically change cancer treatment as we know it.
“One of the little-known facts about The Ottawa Hospital is that we provide the
equipment, facilities and technology, and we do the world-leading research and we’re bringing back the talent,” says Dr. Kitts. “You can’t get better care for complex issues. It’s here. It’s in Ottawa.”
This is the first of an ongoing series about The Ottawa Hospital. Look for the evolving archive on obj.ca.
TOH BY THE NUMBERS
– 1,126,204 OUTPATIENT VISITS
– 48,445 SURGICAL CASES
– 17,702 STAFF, LEARNERS AND VOLUNTEERS
– 169,507 EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT VISITS
– 50,023 PATIENT ADMISSIONS
– 6,296 BABIES DELIVERED
*2014/2015
