Last year, we started this message off by noting how remarkable a year 2020 was.
It’s safe to say that 2021 has followed a similar path.
Over the past 12 months, our teams across Hamilton Health Sciences, including those at West Lincoln Memorial Hospital (WLMH), have continued to demonstrate resilience, dedication, and courage serving patients with unwavering compassion in the most challenging of times. Staff and physicians continue to rise to each occasion and meet every difficult endeavour head on.
At WLMH, we saw many staff bring their highly specialized skills to other hospital sites, helping out in the hardest hit patient care areas, and others volunteering their skills at vaccination sites. Some programs at the site saw twists and turns as the hospital followed the government’s direction in response to the unrelenting virus, changing the way our providers deliver and patients receive care.
All of that turbulence did not stop progress on major WLMH initiatives.
For the first time in the site’s almost 75-year history, patients can now get timely and critical computed tomography (CT) scans in West Niagara. This momentous achievement was the result of many years of work by many hands – in the hospital, the Foundation, the community and at Queen’s Park. The site is now also home to two new x-ray machines and a new mammography suite, allowing more opportunity for preventative screening close to home.
As we head into 2022, we are just months – yes, months – away from construction being able to start on the new hospital. Getting here has taken immense effort, energy and emotional investment. It has been a long road travelled, but when shovels finally break ground on this long-overdue project, we think we will all agree that it was time well spent.
On behalf of Hamilton Health Sciences, we would like to wish our staff, physicians, volunteers, families, donors, community and supporters a very happy, healthy and safe holiday season, and what promises to be a very exciting New Year.
Rob MacIsaac, President and CEO, Hamilton Health Sciences
Leslie Gillies, VP, Community Medicine & Population Health, & Exec Site Lead, WLMH – Hamilton Health Sciences
This message was originally drafted for the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital Foundation annual Trees of Healthy Wishes campaign.