Construction Underway for Fourth Operating Room at NHH Thanks to Community Support

• July 29, 2025
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MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Release

July 29, 2025

NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY – With Northumberland Hills Hospital (NHH) Foundation’s Exceptional Community, Exceptional Care campaign celebrating success in the fall of 2024, key projects supported by community donations are now underway at NHH. This includes construction of a fourth operating room (OR), made possible through the generosity of Bill Humphries and The Radlett Foundation.

An exciting early step in the construction process, a new air handling unit was lifted by crane and installed on the roof of the hospital on the weekend of July 5. This unit will allow the new OR to function as a negative pressure space, in addition to cleaning and conditioning the air temperature and humidity. Having a negative pressure space will allow the opportunity to expand the hospital’s Respirology services and perform procedures such as bronchoscopies.

“We are immensely grateful to the late Bill Humphries and the Trustees of his Foundation for their support of our campaign, and in particular the fourth OR,” shares Rhonda Cunningham, NHH Foundation CEO. “Support from The Radlett Foundation totals $3.4 million and this incredible display of philanthropy is helping support our hospital in bringing visionary projects, advanced technology and new services to our community. We are excited to be at a point now where many of the projects we talked about throughout the campaign are either completed, underway, or set to begin.”

“NHH is in a period of growth focused on enhancing the core services that we offer today, while laying the groundwork for the additional capacity we know our community will need in future,” said NHH President and CEO Susan Walsh. “At its core, NHH is a hospital that remains vibrant thanks to the support of generous donors, like the late Bill Humphries, who are critical to our ability to invest in large scale capital projects. We sincerely appreciate the Radlett Foundation’s exceptional support for our surgical services enhancement. We also applaud the work of the NHH Foundation whose success is helping to drive many key projects forward in tandem with the needs of our growing and aging community.”

Future stages of the construction process include reconfiguration of change rooms, building and equipping the new operating space, renovations to the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) to allow for the support of additional patient volumes, and preparing the space for operational readiness.

“The future of our surgical program is an exciting one,” shares Dr. Andrew Stratford, Chief of Surgical Services. “The addition of a fourth OR – and a negative pressure one at that – will help us to attract and retain talented medical professionals who are looking to work with the latest and best technology. In addition to allowing us to increase our current local and regional surgical capacity, it creates an opportunity for us to explore bringing new surgical services to the area.”

Construction of the fourth OR will continue over the coming months, with the space anticipated to be operational in the summer of 2026. Additional projects funded by the Exceptional Community, Exceptional Care campaign include the replacement of both the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scanners, the addition of a SPECT CT, redevelopment of the Pharmacy, Laboratory, and Medical Device Reprocessing Department (MDRD), and more.

For information on how to support the funding of any of these projects, please contact Rhonda Cunningham at 905-377-7767 or rcunningham@nhh.ca

 

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