Letter to The Pointer from William Osler Health System’s Board Chair

^{Building Brampton’s New Peel Memorial Hospital}

As someone born and raised in Brampton, my family and I have relied on the services provided by William Osler Health System (Osler) for many years. A passion for high-quality health care and ensuring our community is well served are some of the many reasons I joined Osler’s Board of Directors as a volunteer nearly five years ago.

Osler’s Board is proud to have set out an ambitious plan for hospital care in Brampton; the next major step will be transforming Peel Memorial into Brampton’s new second hospital. We all understand our significant hallway medicine pressures, and that our city continues to grow. I am confident a second hospital will have a significant positive impact on health care capacity, and getting this project underway will set the stage for the eventual third hospital that Brampton will require.

With the support of the City and its residents, construction will begin in 2023 and we expect the hospital to open its doors in 2027. The new Peel Memorial Hospital will be a six-to-seven storey patient tower, with 250 inpatient beds when it opens and space to add nearly 100 more inpatient beds. The hospital Board and Osler’s leadership will continue pressing our government partners to secure operational funding to open those additional 100 beds when the building opens or as quickly as possible afterwards.

When combined with the urgent care centre, outpatient clinic, diagnostic, surgery and other facilities already operating on the Peel Memorial site, this will be a huge boost in health services for patients in Brampton. Our plans also include short-stay beds necessary to support an Emergency Department, and many critical new beds for patients recovering from an acute care stay who require specialized care before they can safely return home. Many of these patients currently occupy acute care beds at Brampton Civic Hospital that are badly needed for other patients, including those waiting in our busy Emergency Department. Providing specialized care at Peel Memorial will allow us to open up space for significantly more acute care beds at Brampton Civic Hospital and boost our overall acute and post-acute care capacity as a hospital system. Peel Memorial will also offer new and enhanced outpatient clinics and services for patients with health challenges that do not require overnight care.

As Peel Memorial’s Urgent Care Centre reopens in December and we prepare to expand it to full 24/7 operations in the Spring of 2022, we are also setting the stage for our second full Emergency Department in Brampton. When the new Peel Memorial patient tower opens with needed resources and beds, I am confident that our second 24/7 Emergency Department will also open to complete Peel Memorial’s evolution into Brampton’s second hospital. This is a critical project for our community, and we must act now to bring this to life.

Our new Peel Memorial Hospital will demonstrate the commitment of our residents and all levels of government to a healthy future for our community. Join us as we build a new Peel Memorial Hospital, the next important piece of Brampton’s health care system.

We all want the best for Brampton, and our hospitals are at the heart of that.

Geoffrey Ritchie

Chair, Board of Directors

William Osler Health System