Towering above, SickKids’ new Patient Support Centre joins Toronto’s skyline
Topping off ceremony celebrates a milestone in the hospital’s campus redevelopment project
Today, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and SickKids Foundation celebrated a milestone achievement in the campus redevelopment project known as ‘Project Horizon’. The Patient Support Centre (PSC), a 22-storey tower that will house critical educational, training and administrative resources, was topped off this morning at a rooftop ceremony.
“The Patient Support Centre brings us one step closer towards realizing our collective vision of the future of paediatric health.”
The PSC will be the new home of the SickKids Learning Institute, which supports more than 1,000 world-class trainees, students and learners annually. Within the Learning Institute will be a state-of-the-art Simulation Centre for hands-on teaching in a bright, modern workspace for professionals, management and support staff. Another defining characteristic of the new tower is the variety of collaboration and activity spaces that will be accessible to all staff from across the campus.
"A new SickKids is rising and the excitement among our staff and outstanding community of supporters is palpable," says Ted Garrard, Chief Executive Officer, SickKids Foundation. "Today’s event comes almost three years following the PSC groundbreaking ceremony and almost a decade after we celebrated a transformative step in our campus redevelopment with the opening of the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning (PGCRL). Since then, more than one-million donors have joined our SickKids VS Limits Campaign to build a re-imagined hospital by the year 2035. We are still raising funds for Project Horizon’s next phase, the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower, however the Patient Support Centre brings us one step closer towards realizing our collective vision of the future of paediatric health.”
SickKids is a leader in paediatric health, yet buildings across the hospital campus do not reflect the quality of care provided for the more than 320,000 patients seen from across Canada each year. The campus redevelopment project, also known as Project Horizon, will result in the renewal or renovation of virtually all clinical care and support areas of the hospital and is anticipated to be completed by the year 2035. The three key phases of the project are:
- Patient Support Centre (PSC): a collaboration hub that will consolidate educational and training resources with core administrative services together in one building. The first critical step towards a new hospital.
- Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower: a new acute-care hospital tower that will help SickKids continue to provide some of the best paediatric care in the world, with a renewed focus on patient and family-centred care.
- Renovations to other areas of the existing campus to support new and renovated outpatient clinics.
The main SickKids structure at 555 University Avenue was built in 1949. In 1993, the hospital expanded by opening the Atrium building at 170 Elizabeth Street. Developments in medical treatments and technology have come a long way since then, making it more important than ever for the hospital to evolve and fully realize the possibilities in paediatrics, like in Precision Child Health.
For SickKids to remain at the forefront of paediatric health, SickKids Foundation launched the SickKids VS Limits campaign in 2017 – a campaign which has garnered the support of more than one-million individual donors. From corporate partners to community organizations, individuals and families, the VS Limits campaign has energized a donor base that realizes the importance of the services offered by the hospital and shares the enthusiasm of what SickKids can accomplish with infrastructure that lifts, not limits.
For more information on the PSC and the vision for the new SickKids, including conceptual renderings, please visit: https://www.sickkidsfoundation.com/whyweneedyou/reimagineourcampus
