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Welcome to Harbouring Hope, a podcast brought to you by the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation, hosted by Foundation CEO Barney Ellis-Perry.
In each episode, we’ll take you behind the scenes of the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Oceanside Health Centre, and other facilities supported by our Foundation to explore the many departments, innovations, and dedicated professionals who keep our healthcare system running. From doctors and nurses to administrative leaders and patients with lived experience, we’ll hear powerful stories that reveal both the challenges and the triumphs within our hospital walls.
Most importantly, we’ll shine a light on the critical role our community plays…because behind every success story is a network of generous supporters helping to make it all possible.
People, they want to see change and they want to see it fast, but they know that it's within a large system of multiple ministries and organizations and all of that. So it is a challenging environment to make change happen. How do you sort of stick handle that? Well, to your point around change perhaps not happening fast enough, I think that's the reality of healthcare, as you were saying.
Welcome to Harbouring Hope, a podcast brought to you by the Nanaimo and District Hospital Foundation. I'm Barney Ellis-Perry, CEO of the Foundation and your host for this series. We're on an exciting journey with our dedicated donors who you will hear from throughout this series as they share why it is in our nature to give and their collective vision for improving health across Central and North Vancouver Island. In each episode, we'll take you behind the scenes at the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Oceanside Health Centre and other facilities supported by our Foundation to explore the many
departments, innovations and dedicated professionals who keep our healthcare system running from doctors and nurses to administrative leaders and patients with lived experience. We'll hear powerful stories that reveal both the challenges and the triumphs within our hospital walls. Most importantly, we'll shine a light on the critical role our community plays because behind every success story is a network of generous supporters helping to make it all possible.
Today we are joined by Damian Lange, the Site Lead of the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. Did you know that in 1963, Nanaimo Regional General Hospital was built to serve the community? At that time, the community was 17,000 people. Now, Nanaimo Regional General Hospital is serving 460,000 people, those people living North of the Malahut, and it's serving them as the tertiary referral center. The head guy for all of this is Damian Lange.
So Damian is the Site Lead for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. And I'm really excited to have some time with Damian today so he can give us some insight on what's going on. But before we talk to Damian, a little context. For all the fundraising that the Foundation does, about 85 to 90% of it goes to the NRGH site directly for new developments and programs, such as the High Acuity Unit, the brand new ICU, and new equipment throughout NRGH. While the hospital is in Nanaimo,
it is the tertiary hospital for all of the Central North Island region, meaning we serve so many more people than just the residents of Nanaimo. The best way to put it is this is where the helicopters come from all over Central North Island. We at the Foundation work really closely with Damian and his team to co-create and support their priorities. Let's get into our conversation. So Damian, tell us a little bit about how did you end up as the head guy for the Tertiary Referral Centre?
Well, thanks Barney. Very kind words and it's real honour and privilege to be here with you today and to all of our listeners, likewise, great to be with you. And so first and foremost, I'd like to state that it's always a team effort. I've been in healthcare for over 20 years now and it's just been a series of amazing opportunities that have
landed in front of me or that I pursued to get where I am today. And so, you know, as Site Lead, I lead a team of close to 3,500 people and we work directly with 300 physician partners in the Nanaimo area to provide care to not only the about 200,000 people in the Nanaimo Oceanside region, but the 450,000 that you talked about in Centre North Island. While chatting with Damian before the interview, he shared that when he was younger, he wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. You could say Damian's role within the hospital is similar to flying a plane, but
with over 3,000 employees, 400 in-patients a day, and hundreds of ambulatory patients, there's a lot more people involved than you could fit on a 737. Well, we use the analogy all the time in healthcare of, you know, we're building it as we fly it. And so, with that too, the analogy of turbulent air. I mean, healthcare at the best of times is a challenging environment to work within, and at the same time, it's extremely rewarding.
But yeah, a lot of our projects, a lot of our initiatives, a lot of our endeavors that we embark on in healthcare, you know, I like to think we're amazing planners and I think we are to some extent and a lot of what we do is very much reactive based on the need of the population, both locally and abroad. And so we have to be nimble, we have to be adept with change and be willing to work through trial and error. And so yeah, a lot of airplane analogies, you know, which I'm fond of keeping in the back pocket for days when needed.
Yeah, I think that's one thing I'm amazed by is the flexibility of your team. Like, you don't know one day to the next, are you going to be 100 patients over census or 50 patients over all the adjustments that takes the constant, you know, changing and adjusting of spaces and programs within this structure of NRGH. I find really fascinating. How do you keep fresh with all that? Well, that's one of the beauties of healthcare is that no matter what role you're in,
no day is ever the same, right? Every patient, every family, every interaction is dramatically different. And so that's, you know, that always brings some level of excitement and change and optimism, I suppose, to what we do. And we know that the demands placed on NRGH are immense and they continue to grow. And with that, we as a leadership team and as a clinical and physician team have to find ways to adapt and innovate.
To fill some gaps, I asked Damian to give us some high level statistics regarding the hospital to better understand why demands are struggling to be met. What folks need to know is that NRGH is a 354 bed hospital and that is the second largest on the island. And on any given day, of those 354 beds that hold patients, we have an average utilization of about 400
patients that jockey for those beds. So what that means is we've got dozens of patients that may end up in suboptimal care areas. They may be backed up into our emergency department. We're opening up overflow areas to try and accommodate some of the surge in demand and we're often running over capacity. And I would state with those comments that, you know, we're no different than most other sites across BC and across Canada. We've got the busiest emergency department on the island. On any given day, you know, close to 200 patients on average walk through the doors of the Nanaimo Emergency Department for care.
And I like to draw comparisons to our brother or sister sites in the region and in South Island or big sites in Victoria, they see about 155 to 160 a day. And so close to 200 is a very busy emergency department. And of those 200 that come through the door, we admit about 40 for overnight care. We do north of 50 surgeries a day at NRGH, whether you're needing to be admitted for overnight care, whether you're a daycare surgery or whether you're an ambulatory surgery, we do north of 50 procedures a day.
A lot of folks may not realize NRGH is the largest employer in the region, as well as one of the biggest economic drivers in the region. NRGH contributes greatly to the Nanaimo and area economy. I wanted to talk to Damian about some of the projects that are coming up that are thanks to the generosity of our community. A great example is the new cancer centre that's about to be built on the NRGH site. When we think about cancer care, I don't need to tell anybody that having to drive for care at any point in time is a significant burden.
When you talk about cancer care and how our patients or families are dealing with the physical and the emotional burden of those disease processes, driving one, two, three, four hours to seek care multiple times over the course of a care journey is an extreme impediment. We've got a philosophy within healthcare in general around, we're always attempting to provide services as close to home as possible. And, you know, that's easier said than done. But as it relates to cancer care,
you know, in the next three years, when the door is open and beyond over this next series of decades, we're going to be able to provide in partnership with our BC Cancer friends and family, we're going to be able to provide comprehensive cancer care in Centre Island. And so right outside my window here will be the Comprehensive Cancer Centre to the tune of $300 million. And so when we think about the Victoria Cancer Centre, if anybody's familiar with the Victoria Cancer Centre, we'll have essentially one of those in Nanaimo.
Yeah, I think it's also exciting what we've been able to do in the last year around cancer support within NRGH. So we have the first SPECT/CT that was provided by the government about 18 months ago. We will hopefully have a new one up and running thanks to our donors later this year, and that's a $2.9 million lift. But also for the operating rooms, we've been able to purchase equipment thanks to our donors to support all the way through the cancer journey, specifically a lot for breast cancer.
Now we have a new top of the line laser program coming in for prostate cancer and other urological diseases or symptoms. So really excited about that and it's been a big lift. Last year it's over $4 million in new equipment throughout the hospital that donors have provided. So it's pretty cool. So the cancer stuff's really exciting. What else excites you? What else is on the horizon that is cool?
There's a lot of exciting things on the horizon, including there will be a patient care tower in Nanaimo. That's sort of our North Star that we're working towards, but we're working closely with our ministry partners on business case and some of the preliminary planning for a new patient tower, which is very exciting. And that would be the pinnacle of anyone's career to be able to see through an infrastructure build of that magnitude. More tangibly though, we've got, we're currently working on finishing the High Acuity Unit and we've recently completed the Intensive Care Unit.
So we're going to have in the next three months 24 critical care beds here in Nanaimo, which will be the most on the island. And not only is that a Nanaimo resource, that's a Centre North Island resource, that's an Island Health resource, and frankly, that's a provincial resource. We have an immense opportunity here in the central island region with population growth and some of what we see in our infrastructure to really improve care. And I think frankly, Nanaimo's got a spotlight on it
for a lot of good reasons. And we've got a massive opportunity in front of us to really make a dent on what care is gonna be for the next five years, but what care is really gonna be for the next 50 years. I was going through my head earlier when you were talking about the sort of approach and what I love about you and your team is you're scrappy and you're like, things are difficult, right? It's not easy and you're willing to take risks and it's not easy here.
Nothing's being handed to any of you on a silver platter. And we've got to be scrappy and we can be innovative. And I think that scrappiness leads to innovation, which is really exciting. And you lead with that. You encourage people to think innovatively and you show that you're willing to stand up for people and get behind it. And that's, from the Foundation perspective, is amazing because we love to support innovation and that's attractive to donors. So people, they want to see change and they want to see it fast, but they know that it's within a large system
of multiple ministries and organizations and all of that. So it is a challenging environment to make change happen. How do you sort of stick handle that? I see you at work, but what's going on behind the scenes as you try and lead your teams through change and to support innovation? We have immense data at our disposal that is now really highlighting the burden of disease and the care opportunities that exist
outside of our bigger centres. And so for instance, we know we've got a high burden of disease as it relates to cardiac conditions, a higher burden of disease as it relates to cardiac conditions in Centre North Island compared to South Island and compared to some of our provincial partners. And so my point is really leveraging the data
on how we're gonna work towards improving services and identify our priorities. And so what are our most in need populations? What's the data telling us? We can't work off emotion and anecdote. It's gotta be data driven as we know. And so that's step one. Before signing off with Damian, I asked him what keeps him coming to the office each day, continuing to help those in need while maintaining an excellent attitude in tough conditions and under extreme pressure. Pressure is a privilege.
And so that's part of how I bring myself to work each and every day and to be in these roles that, to your point, have significant pressure. Well, that in reality is a privilege. It's a privilege to have these roles. It's a privilege to do the work we do to improve care. And like I say, try and leave it better than we found it yesterday or today. And I'm convinced that most, if not all, of our clinicians and physicians and all of our care partners work within that same philosophy.
Any role that folks have within healthcare, it's a real privilege to have, particularly in a public sector like Canada has. And so the work we do is through the dedication of thousands of people each and every day. And so no matter what discipline folks have, everybody contributes to care. And I'd say that I'm just extremely proud of our clinicians and professionals that we have here in the Nanaimo region, Island Health, more broadly.
and also proud of the engagement that we have with our multiple partners that I've talked about. But like I said, really the energy that's starting to cascade, you know, I continue to envision this snowball that's cascading down the hill and you know, just the energy, the momentum that we're starting to get in Centre North Island as it relates to advocating for care. I'm thankful I get the opportunity and I look forward to all of our partnerships over the coming years and we are gonna leave it better than we found it and let's do this thing. I love it.
I love it. Thank you. I love pressure is a privilege and there is pressure on all of us. I think it's also pressure on folks who are listening to pay attention, to be aware of what's happening on healthcare in our community, to be advocates in every way they can, to write the letters they need to write, to stand up for our community and to really become a force, as you say, everyone marching in lockstep together to really improve this for generations to come. And I get to wear two hats on any given day. I'm a citizen of the community. I've got
deep roots in the Nanaimo area and the island in general, and I'm fortunate enough to have my role with Island Health. And so I guess on behalf of both of those hats, thank you to our esteemed donors for past work, current work, future work, all of the efforts that they continue to contribute to healthcare and in Centre North Island in particular. Thank you for joining us today on Harbouring Hope. To learn more about the Nanaimo and District Hospital Foundation, please visit nanaimohospitalfoundation.com. I'm your host, Barney Ellis-Perry.
If you are a current or future partner of the foundation, thank you. With your unwavering support, we are delivering a new standard of care for all who call this amazing region home. Together, it's in our nature to give.
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