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As the future home of Canada’s most advanced trauma centre and one of the world’s most innovative neuroscience research programs, our new campus will transform health care in our community and beyond—but future innovations at The Ottawa Hospital aren’t confined to just one location.
“The General, Civic and Riverside campuses have served our city for decades and will continue to do so for many more to come,” says Joanne Read, Executive Vice-President and Chief Planning & Development Officer at The Ottawa Hospital. “Our community is one of the fastest growing in the province—and we need to meet this increased demand with increased capacity. The new campus is critical to accomplishing this goal, but so are our existing three campuses.”
“We have dozens of projects in the works to transform many spaces at the General, Civic and Riverside,” explains Karen Stockton, Executive Director of Planning. “As these projects materialize over the coming years, we will be able to care for more members of our growing community and offer a greater depth and breadth of services.”
Want a closer look at the future of health care in Ottawa? Here’s a preview of just a few innovations coming to our campuses.
Onsite long-term care homes at the Civic and Riverside campuses
To expand care services for our community’s growing senior population, both the Civic and Riverside campuses will be future sites of long-term care homes run by Schlegel Villages. As part of the Ontario government’s commitment to build 30,000 new long-term care beds by 2028, 320 new beds have been allocated to the Civic home and 256 to Riverside. The Riverside home will be a completely new building and is slated to open in the next two to three years, followed by the Civic after our new campus opens in 2028.
New MRI machine and updated bed design for the General Campus Cancer Centre
The Cancer Centre has acquired a new MRI machine that will help address present and future MRI needs of the Ottawa community as well as support the hospital’s extensive teaching, research and training commitments. Scheduled to be installed by summer 2024, this MRI machine embraces the latest technology, producing higher-quality images and creating a better patient experience due to shorter examination times.
The Ottawa Hospital is also making innovations to the Cancer Centre’s Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Program, which performs hundreds of stem cell transplants every year to treat patients with life threatening blood and immune disorders. We recently expanded the program’s medical day care unit, which provides our patients with a variety of treatments that do not require admission to the hospital. By 2023, we will have finished upgrading the program’s inpatient beds to the latest design standards.
New Rehabilitation Centre at the Civic Campus
The Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre assists patients who have experienced a disabling physical illness or injury, helping them maximize their independence and rebuild their lives. Currently located at the General Campus, the centre will move to the existing Civic Campus after the new campus opens its doors in 2028. A new building will be constructed to house the updated centre, which will offer expanded bed capacity, a modern design, improved accessibility and an overall more comfortable environment for patients and staff.
Growth of outpatient care services at the Riverside Campus
Situated alongside the city’s public transit network, the Riverside Campus is the ideal location for our designated ambulatory care centre, which provides our community with a wide array of outpatient care services. As use of public transit grows, we want our services to grow accordingly.
The Nephrology Program, already one of the largest in Canada, will see further expansion to meet growing demand, allowing the Riverside’s nephrology clinic to deliver its broad range of services to even more patients affected by kidney disease. The Department of Ophthalmology is also making plans to accommodate future patient growth, with early discussions exploring how to optimize the existing space and whether new space will be needed.
Expansion of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the General Campus
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the General Campus cares for extremely premature infants and is the designated high-risk referral centre for Eastern and Southeastern Ontario and Western Quebec. The Division of Neonatology is planning a multi-year expansion project, with bed capacity at the NICU currently estimated to grow by 15 percent, allowing us to care for more of our community’s youngest patients.
Enhancements to our world-class research facilities
The Ottawa Hospital and its Research Institute are also planning a number of upgrades to research infrastructure. For example, in our Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre at the General Campus, renovations are currently underway to install a new robotic machine that produces genetically-enhanced immune cells targeted to cancer cells. This innovative therapy, called CAR-T therapy, has been able to cure patients with certain kinds of blood cancer who had no other hope. The Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre will also undergo a larger expansion in the coming years to enhance our ability to produce new therapies for diseases that affect the brain, heart, lungs and other organs.
More campus innovations
Learn about some of our recent campus upgrades and what we have planned for our new campus:
- Five environmental initiatives at The Ottawa Hospital: From sustainable design at our new campus to choosing ultra low-flow anesthesia in our operating rooms, here are a few things The Ottawa Hospital is doing to care for the health of our patients, staff and environment.
- A new home for men’s health: The Grass Family Men’s Health Clinic opened its doors in late 2021, providing a dedicated space for excellence in men’s health care and research.
- New Campus Development: Discover how our new campus will help build a more resilient health-care system in our city.
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