Children’s Hospital at LHSC adding 10 ER beds in $3M expansion

A surge of sick kids. Space so tight, some were treated in the hallways. A $3-million fix that can’t come soon enough.

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Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Center will expand its emergency room by nearly 50 per cent in the new year, an ambitious renovation – the first since it was built – made possible by $3 million promised from the Children’s Health Foundation.

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“We have had an escalation of need and demand over the past few years that has been quite remarkable,” Rod Lim, medical director of the Children’s Hospital emergency department, said.

“Our timeline is so aggressive because the need is so high.”

Construction on the addition will begin in early January and last until June. The expansion is taking over a vacant space next to the ER once occupied by a department that moved elsewhere in the hospital, Lim said.

The Children’s Hospital emergency room at LHSC’s Victoria campus has 24 beds. The renovation will give it room for 10 more, including two additional treatment rooms, private spaces for procedures such as setting broken bones or stitches, Lim said. The addition will also help the department better support child and youth mental health patients.

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“We’re so grateful for families and children for being understanding. They see us working really hard, we have an amazing team, but we are seeing people in the most efficient and creative way possible right now, whether that’s in hallway chairs or distant parts of the hospital,” Lim said.

“We’ve outgrown our space for a while now. . . . We needed an immediate solution to give us some breathing room.”

Pressure has been mounting on the Children’s Hospital ER for the last several years, Lim said. Explosive population growth in the London region, ongoing issues accessing pediatric care in the community and pandemic-related hits to children’s health and mental health have put a major strain on the ER, he said.

Last winter, the pediatric hospital weathered a perfect storm of seasonal flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that pushed it to 115 percent capacity in its inpatient beds, its highest occupancy ever.

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Pre-pandemic, the department had about 34,000 children coming through the doors each year, Lim said. That number is now closer to 46,000.

The board of the Children’s Health Foundation, the fundraising arm of the hospital, committed to funding the $3-million renovation at its meeting last week, vice-president of philanthropy Tim Tribe said Wednesday.

“The need has been there for a while,” Tribe said. “The emergency department is often the first point of entry for people. Children’s Health Foundation is committed to making sure that our Children’s Hospital has everything that they need to provide the best possible care.”

With a construction timeline of about six months, the extra space won’t be available in time to help Children’s Hospital grapple with the seasonal respiratory illness surge this winter, but will make a world of difference to patients and their families once it’s opened, Lim said.

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“One of the most important components, beyond people, is space. This ability to immediately address that, to give us some breathing room, is just so exciting,” he said.

Children’s Hospital, one of five pediatric hospitals in Ontario, serves a population of 1.5 million people, including 400,000 children. The emergency room renovation is the first for the department since it moved to its current location in the early 2000s.

Construction on the building that houses Children’s Hospital began in 2002 and wrapped up in 2008.

The upcoming renovation is unlikely to be the last big-ticket investment in the department, Lim said.

“This is a really important, immediate step that is needed to decompress a lot of the pressures that we’re facing in the emergency department today,” he said.

“This is our first step toward our hope of having a world-class space.”

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