Above: Members of the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre team: (L-R) Brooke Boulerice, Registered Nurse; Nancy Tuttle, Registered Nurse; Dr. Abdel-Rahman Lawendy, Medical Director, Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre; Shayla McAlpine, Registered Practical Nurse; Lee Benaroch, Junior Chief Resident; and Kristen Reballato, Registered Nurse.
January 16, 2025
Today, the Government of Ontario announced funding to expand the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). The expansion – which includes four new operating rooms, an expansion to the medical device reprocessing department (MDR) at the Surgical Centre, and additional preparation and recovery space – will triple the surgical capacity at Ontario’s first high-efficiency ambulatory surgical centre, where surgeries are performed faster and at a lower cost with a consistently high patient satisfaction rating.
“Our government continues to lead the country with the shortest surgical wait times of any province to ensure people have fast, convenient access to surgical procedures in their community,” says Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “This expansion of the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre at London Health Sciences Centre will reduce surgical wait times and connect even more people in the London area to the surgeries and procedures they need in a timely manner, for years to come.”
Patients seen at the Surgical Centre, which is located across the street from LHSC’s Victoria Hospital, are those getting surgeries considered ‘low risk’ or ‘low complexity’ – standard procedures like hernia repairs and orthopaedic surgeries where patients are discharged on the same day. Taking a lean management approach – a system focused on maximizing value while minimizing waste and inefficiencies – the team has been able to standardize these types of procedures to make them more efficient and cost-effective.
“The Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre is the first publicly funded ambulatory surgical centre of its kind in Ontario. We’re proud of how it has fundamentally improved the experience for patients receiving surgery at LHSC,” says David Musyj, LHSC Supervisor. “This investment by the Ford Government will help create more capacity in not just the Surgical Centre, but in all of LHSC’s operating rooms, helping Ontarians receive their surgery faster and in the best environment for them.”
The Surgical Centre team currently performs approximately 2,000 surgeries each year with two operating rooms, performing up to 15 surgeries each day. The expansion will allow the Surgical Centre to triple its annual volume to perform approximately 6,000 surgeries each year.
An innovative approach to surgery design
“The story behind the Surgical Centre is one of innovation and teamwork,” says Dr. Abdel-Rahman Lawendy, Medical Director at the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre. “We identified there was a better way to do these surgeries – a faster, more efficient way, with excellent patient satisfaction – and we made it happen.”
Each aspect of the Surgical Centre was designed thoughtfully and intentionally to make the best use of resources and reduce waste. For example, surgeons were consulted to standardize and reduce the number of surgical instruments being brought into each procedure, resulting in a reduction of up to 80 per cent of instruments for some procedures. Sterilization of these instruments was also optimized by building a more cost-effective medical device reprocessing (MDR) unit on-site at the Surgical Centre, rather than sending them for sterilization at one of LHSC’s main MDR sites.
This intentional, innovative approach has allowed the Surgical Centre to perform surgeries up to 56 per cent cheaper and up to 25 per cent faster than those performed in a traditional hospital environment. Since the Surgical Centre opened in 2020, more than 8,000 surgeries have been completed successfully and less than one per cent needing a follow-up surgery.
“What is remarkable is that these surgeries are not just faster and less expensive to perform, but patients are consistently happy with their experience,” says Dr. Lawendy.
Patients have reported a high degree of satisfaction with their experience at the Surgical Centre, with an average rating of 5 out of 5 as of December 2024.
The success of the program has garnered considerable interest and positive attention from peer hospitals nationally and internationally, highlighting LHSC and Ontario as leaders in ambulatory surgical care.
“We receive calls daily from hospitals across the province, country and even around the world who want to hear about what we’re doing here,” says Cathy Vandersluis, Vice President, Surgery, Cardiac, Transplant, Quality and Health Disciplines. “They know we’ve done something special, and they want to replicate it.”
Expanding capacity for all surgeries
LHSC is one of the largest hospitals in Canada, completing over 30,000 surgeries annually. The hospital provides specialized care to a vast region with patients coming from as far away as Windsor, Grey Bruce, and even Thunder Bay.
Moving certain types of procedures exclusively to the Surgical Centre has relieved some space pressure at LHSC’s main hospital sites, allowing the hospital to make the best use of its main operating rooms for surgeries that are more complex, such as transplants or cancer surgeries. Since opening in 2020, the Surgical Centre has enabled LHSC perform 1,000 additional surgeries each year across all operating rooms. In that same period, the number of patients waiting for non-cancer surgeries at LHSC has reduced by 18 per cent. The continued generosity of donors like Nazem Kadri to the London Health Sciences Foundation (LHSF) has been critical to the program’s success, and LHSF continues to accept donations to further support the Surgical Centre.
Looking to the future, Dr. Lawendy is inspired and excited by the potential this model could have for health care provincially, nationally, and even globally. He believes the approach could apply to additional types of surgery as well.
“This expansion will help us build on our success and help more patients receive their surgery faster,” he says.