In order to bring safe, quality health care to our patients, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) developed a partnership with the University Health Network’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (UHN-PMCC) and together, a corridor of services was created using a ‘One Program on Two Sites’ model for cardiovascular care. The purpose of this model is to save lives and limbs and to reduce the burden of cardiac and vascular disease in Northwestern Ontario by improving access to essential services right here at home.

With UHN-PMCC as our partner, we are ensuring that our care is top-notch and that our patients and families will receive the very best care possible. Our partnership allows us to extend the reach of UHN-PMCC’s centre of excellence into Northwestern Ontario so patients may benefit from leading edge advancements in cardiovascular care.

With the goal to improve access to high quality cardiac and vascular surgical services for Northwestern Ontario residents, the UHN-PMCC’s will share their clinical expertise to support the development of TBRHSC into a fully operational surgical site for selected cardiovascular case types. Wherever possible, care will be delivered ‘close to home’. The cases that are complex and outside of the criteria established for TBRHSC will be managed at the UHN-PMCC. In this manner, the appropriate level of care is offered to all patients, ranging from routine to complex, across two sites. 

As we continue to move through stages of the capital planning process, the objective of this capital project remains to equip TBRHSC with contemporary surgical, inpatient and ambulatory care facilities to provide a comprehensive cardiovascular surgery program to the only major geographic region in Ontario where this surgical service is not available.