West Park Healthcare Centre's new vision for rehab featured in The Globe and Mail
June 6, 2024
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With a rising aging population, often with complex chronic medical conditions, there is a growing need for acute and long-term rehab facilities.
The new West Park Healthcare Centre in Toronto aims to provide specialized rehabilitative care to meet that demand. The Globe and Mail highlights the experience of an amputee patient who was one of the first to move into the new 316-bed facility.
“The room I was in before in the old building was a shared ward, and here it’s private. I’m just flabbergasted at how comfortable and spacious the room is. I can wheel around there like it’s a racetrack,” Graham Donoghue told the publication.
Marsha Spencer, our Toronto office's Business Practice Leader and member of the project team noted in the piece that more than 80 percent of the rooms are single occupancy, an improvement from the old building where some shared rooms had four beds.
Marsha also highlights how the building incorporates the surrounding Humber River Valley into the interior design by "bringing the outdoors, indoors."
All patient rooms have a view to the surrounding woodlands, and inpatient units have access to landscaped terraces. Much of the interior's color palette takes inspiration from nature and nature-inspired graphics are used as wayfinding markers throughout the building.
The Globe and Mail also notes the expanded services the new building offers: "The outpatient rehabilitation area significantly expands the range of rehabilitation equipment available. A vast therapy pool features warm water at different depths and equipment including an underwater treadmill. There are also fully outfitted apartments that include a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom for patients to practise the tasks they will face on their return to home life."
