ARNPRIOR – A new medical device reprocessing department will be a boon to day surgery procedures and many other departments at the Arnprior and District Memorial Hospital.

Arnprior Regional Health (ARH) opened its newly redeveloped Medical Device Reprocessing Department (MDRD) – a state-of-the-art facility that helps provide even better patient care in the community.

“Our Medical Device Reprocessing (MDRD) facility was 50 years old and external reviews confirmed what we knew that the space needed to be updated to meet current standards,” ARH CEO Eric Hanna said during the grand opening on April 26.  “We were faced with two options: keep the service in-house or outsource to another facility. After careful analysis, it was clear that the best long-term and financial option was to renovate the MDRD to maintain the service in-house.”

The MDRD is adjacent to the operating rooms and provides reprocessing of reusable medical devices for operating rooms, the Ambulatory Care Clinics, the Emergency Department, Diagnostic Imaging, the Family Health Team, and the Inpatient Unit – it also reprocesses and sterilizes hardware i.e. basins for entire hospital and Grove Nursing Home. 

The total cost of the renovation was $2,185,000. ARH received a Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care capital grant for $1,793,600 and the remainder was paid for through ARH parking lot proceeds.

“Our government’s nearly $1.8 million capital funding is a much-needed infrastructure investment to modernize ARH’s MDRD facility and technologies,” said Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke MPP John Yakabuski. “This redevelopment allows the hospital to deliver better patient care closer to home.”

 “This project is an example of our commitment to ensuring we work with the provincial government to find every opportunity to capital funding to continually work to update and improve our hospital facilities,” Hanna added.

The renovation began in August 2018 and was completed in March 2019. The new space consists of three separate rooms: decontamination, sterilization, prep and pack. The facility meets current standards and includes new automated technologies that further enhance patient safety such as controlled water temperature and a controlled amount of detergent dispensed.

“Over the last 10 years, the MDRD had been challenged by limited physical space and inadequate environmental infrastructure to meet the reprocessing requirements of the hospital,” Hanna said. “The redeveloped facility gives our hospital capacity to support future changes to surgical activity in our community.”

The ARH surgical program has two operating room theatres, a day surgery unit, recovery\room and supporting surgical clinics. The hospital performs approximately 560 surgical procedures and 1,900 endoscopic procedures annually.

The MDRD redevelopment was led by third party vendors Frecon Construction Ltd., Dredge Leahy Architects and Colliers Project Leaders.