Keep out, patient!
West Park’s expanded Outpatient Services are helping more people recover at home
By Doug Earle,
CEO, West Park Foundation
The desire to get out of hospital and return home is a powerful and universal sentiment, fueled by a yearning for the comfort, familiarity, and independence that home represents.
In the often sterile, clinical environment of a hospital, patients find themselves longing for the warmth of their own bed, the sounds of their loved ones, and the routine of their daily lives.
Anyone who has been in hospital knows exactly the feeling.
And UHN-West Park certainly knows that feeling. We understand that most people want to recover in their own home. If they are hospitalized, we get them back home as quickly as possible and, if required, continuing their recovery on an outpatient basis.
By investing in doubling the outpatient care capacity in our new hospital building, West Park has strengthened not only our role as a ‘bridge’ in the health system – helping people return home safely following a stay in acute care – but also our ‘buffer’ role, helping people maintain their health and avoid a hospital stay.
Driven by research, and inspired by the latest in technological advances, West Park has built a holistic range of restorative outpatient services that include:
Respiratory: Covering the gamut of respiratory conditions including tuberculosis, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), pulmonary fibrosis, and patients requiring long-term ventilation.
Geriatrics: Our Geriatric Interprofessional Assessment Clinic offers comprehensive assessment of the domains associated with ageing to identify factors that can improve health, maximize independence and safety. Our new Geriatric Day Hospital will provide the education and therapy of the inpatient program but the patient gets to go home at night.
Amputee: West Park’s Prosthetics and Orthotics department houses a full-service manufacturing facility, one that can build state-of-the-art prostheses and orthoses that will improve the quality of life and independence of amputee rehabilitation patients. Over 2,500 people visit our P&O Centre annually to maintain their protheses.
Spasticity: More than 350,000 Canadians have spasticity, and for many it makes daily activities painful or impossible, reducing quality of life. West Park’s spasticity management program is tackling one of the most untreated challenges facing Canadians impacted by stroke, MS and other neurological conditions affecting the central nervous system.
Our expanded outpatient rehabilitation gym and water therapy pool means results-oriented rehabilitation through appropriate, timely and personalized treatments specific to patients’ individual rehabilitation needs. With our new space, we can offer wellness services providing integrated, multi-disciplinary and collaborative treatment within one facility.
By helping keep patients out of acute care; by helping them get back home as quickly as possible; by designing treatment plans that ensure their recovery goals are clear; the end result is nothing short of transformative. For the patient, for their family, and for the health system overall. West Park Foundation donors should be proud of our new hospital building and how it is changing health care.
