One hundred and fifty years of public health care in Riverdale.
An artist rendering of the soon-to-built 10-storey Bridgepoint Health facility, which will replace the current half-round building on the site.
Photo/COURTESY
"Riverdale will once again be the community for the leading centre of excellence in health care. That's what it was in the 1860s and that's what it is today." - Marian Walsh, Bridgepoint Health's president and CEO
For 150 years, the northwest corner of Gerrard Street East and Broadview Avenue has been home to a facility where Torontonians - regardless of their income or background - have been able to receive quality health care.
"This hospital and this site has been an important part of the fabric of this city and of the health-care landscape for all of that time," said Marian Walsh, Bridgepoint Health's president and CEO, during a recent interview.
"You can trace the evolution of hospital health care (in Toronto) through Bridgepoint."
On June 1, 1860, the 100-bed House of Refuge opened on the 119-acre site east of the Don River, which back then was outside the official boundaries of the city of Toronto. The facility, the first Toronto shelter for "the helpless and homeless," was innovative for its time, said Walsh, as free or affordable public health care was unheard of.
"The city's forefathers had a big vision for the future and wanted to be a progressive city," she said, noting the House of Refuge was established more than a century before NDP founder and longtime Saskatchewan politician Tommy Douglas, known as the father of medicare, pioneered the concept of free universal health care in Canada.
"It was a place where people who did not have the money to pay for health care could go. That was a hugely visionary thing to do."
With the city's population reaching 40,000, Toronto's health care needs began to evolve and just 12 years after the House of Refuge "for incurables, incapables and indigent poor" opened it was converted into a temporary hospital to help contain an 1869 smallpox epidemic - the first of many over a 30-year period.
"This was the first frontier of modern medicine and one of the first public hospitals in Toronto," Walsh said, noting the local hospital was the first in Toronto to administer the smallpox vaccine.
"(The House of Refuge) reinvented itself to become The Smallpox Hospital and we just kept doing that. We really were leading the way for Toronto and for the province."
In 1891, The Smallpox Hospital was renamed The Isolation Hospital treating patients with a range of infectious diseases including diphtheria, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, measles and polio. The vaccine for diphtheria, the Behring antitoxin serum, was first used in Ontario at that Riverdale facility in 1893.
By 1894, the hospital had established a training school to respond to the demand for specialized nursing skills that could treat infectious diseases. It went on to merge with the University of Toronto (U of T) in 1918.
The culture of education at the site continued and in 1902 fourth-year medical students from U of T started training there in the treatment of communicable diseases. In 1922, the Riverdale Isolation Hospital became the university's recognized centre for teaching in the treatment of communicable diseases.
That same year, the new Swiss Cottage Hospital was built on the banks of the Don River and a handful of remaining smallpox patients were transferred there. All future smallpox cases were treated at that building until 1927. The edifice was demolished in 1930.
The Hastings Building - named after Dr. Charles Hastings, Toronto's visionary chief medical officer of health from 1910 to 1929 - was erected at the Riverdale site in 1927 to address the most pressing health care issue of that time: measles.
Continuing with its policy of turning no one away, the City of Toronto's public health department subsidized fees for patients who couldn't afford to pay for health care at The Isolation Hospital during the depression years of the 1930s.
After the Second World War in 1945, The Isolation Hospital - known for employing public health measures such as better hygiene, immunizations and the use of antibiotics to eradicate illnesses - became a Regional Centre for Polio, treating adults with the disease from across the province. The last of the 40 iron lung machines at the Riverdale Hospital was donated to Sarajevo in the 1980s.
Second frontier of modern medicine
On June 1, 1963, the new Riverdale Hospital, an 800-bed facility for chronic care and rehabilitation, opened its doors ushering in the second frontier of modern medicine: human anatomy.
"Modern medicine was trying to understand how the body works and how to fix it," Walsh explained, adding it was a period of many challenges as health-care providers worked hard to treat patients living with chronic illnesses for long periods of time.
The facility become home to a stroke recovery unit in 1972, helping to minimize the effects of disability caused by stoke.
Three years later in 1975, a 10-bed oncology palliative care unit opened at the Riverdale Hospital. It would expand into a 40-bed unit within a year.
In 1990, a dialysis unit for patients with kidney disease that required complex medical care opened at the site. That same year saw the development of on-site training and education at Riverdale Hospital for George Brown College students studying to become personal service providers and nurses through Ryerson University.
Continuing to be an innovator, in 1995 Riverdale Hospital became the site of Ontario's first and only complex continuing care program for HIV/AIDS patients.
New name
Rebranded as Bridgepoint Health in 2002, the local health-care facility has now refocused its mandate on responding to the most pressing health-care challenges of the 21st century: complex chronic disease.
"Now we're turning our attention to figuring out how people can live well with multiple or one underlying condition that might have a lot of complications," Walsh said, referring to people living with diabetes or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).
"We're now seeing patients living for long periods of time with complicated illnesses."
Walsh explained the premise of the next frontier of health care - the third one - is disease prevention and health promotion.
"The face of health care is changing so that we're focusing on preventative health and wellness and quality of life. The whole idea is to work on prevention earlier on so people stay well in the first place," she said, adding the hospital is once again affiliated with the University of Toronto as a community teaching hospital for health-care professionals learning how to treat and provide rehabilitation for people with complex illnesses as well as a centre for research and innovation.
"We're leading the way in transforming how doctors and other health-care professionals need to partner with patients to not only treat their sickness but help them live well."
To foster this philosophy, Bridgepoint Health is now in the process of undertaking a $622-million redevelopment.
"We're changing this whole corner by building a new hospital," she said, adding the innovative and airy design of the new 'Campus of Wellness' will play an important role in patient care.
"It's the first hospital of its kind in Canada. The building will enable rehabilitation."
Walsh said the new 472-bed, 10-storey hospital along with Bridgepoint's network of resources and partner organizations is part of a larger effort to provide those with chronic disease a better quality of life.
"Riverdale will once again be the community for the leading centre of excellence in health care. That's what it was in the 1860s and that's what it is today," she said.
"We're proud to be part of this community. We appreciate the support the hospital has had over the last 150 years and especially the last 10 to 12 years to keep a hospital in this community."
In honour of its 150th anniversary year, Bridgepoint Health has held a number of internal events including a birthday-themed annual general meeting in June.
A set of banners and posters are also prominently displayed in the hospital's reception area and other areas of the facility highlighting the century and a half of innovative health care provided at the Riverdale facility.
Additionally, the 150th anniversary was profiled during the Canada Day celebrations in Riverdale Park this summer, in the hospital's redevelopment newsletter, Changing the Landscape, and on its recently re-launched website at www.bridgepointhealth.ca
A larger community celebration is planned for early 2013 when the new main hospital building opens.