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The facility is designed to be self-sufficient and self-contained, with its own waiting room, surgical device sterilization suite and 10-bed pre- and post-operative recovery space.

The newly renovated space has three hospital-grade operating rooms. Two are ready for patients while the third will be opened as operations ramp up at the facility. LHSC’s surgical centre will see its first patients March 9, phasing in to an official opening in April and ribbon cutting later this year, Lawendy said.

The operating rooms at Victoria Hospital and University Hospital are ready to handle any case you throw at them, from an organ transplant to tonsillectomy, Lawendy said.

“The philosophy is it should be staffed to handle any case at any time. It has maximal resources. That’s the way every single hospital in Ontario and Canada typically runs,” Lawendy said. “But the truth is a liver transplant surgery needs more resources than a knee scope in a 21-year-old.”

Time and money are lost when operating rooms in large hospitals have to re-tool the suites to handle vastly different procedures, Lawendy said.

It’s also inefficient when every tool in the surgeon’s arsenal, including sterile trays of about 100 instruments, are at the ready for every procedure, Lawendy said. The instruments, even ones untouched by surgeons, need to be sterilized after every operation — a significant time and cost consideration.

LHSC’s surgical centre planners worked with surgeons to determine the most-used instruments and pared down the trays to reduce the number that need to be reprocessed.