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Stevenson Memorial Stays Strong During Ice Storm

Stevenson Memorial Stays Strong During Ice Storm

Stevenson Memorial Hospital (SMH) suffered a power outage during the recent ice storm that struck the Simcoe County community. Power was out at the hospital from approximately 8:00pm on March 24th until 3:00 pm, March 25th.

Throughout those nineteen challenging hours, every member of the hospital team present worked tirelessly to ensure that safe, quality, patient care did not suffer.            

“I want to extend my personal gratitude to all Stevenson Memorial Staff for their dedication during the recent ice storm,” says Jody Levac, President and CEO. “Your teamwork and absolute commitment to ensuring quality patient care during those hours of crisis was inspirational. On behalf of myself as well as the entire community, I want to thank each and every one of you for your efforts.”

“It was inspiring to see everyone pull together as a team at SMH to put our patients first,” says Nadia Anderson, X-ray Technologist at SMH. “We were still able to serve our patients by preforming x-ray exams with our portable x-ray on backup generator power. We all worked hard so that quality, patient care never suffered.”

Not only did Stevenson continue to provide excellent medical care for its patients, the hospital also offered its assistance to the greater community by providing an emergency warming centre and oxygen for community patients in need, all while continuing to care for patients and their families. As well, SMH ultimately ensured the health of hundreds of community members by providing vital refrigeration for temperature sensitive medications for community pharmacies.

Dialysis patients received excellent care thanks to emergency generated power and the hospital completed a safe, quality emergency C-section operation while on generator backup power. SMH also served as a gathering point for community members desperate for coffee and a necessary caffeine fix. It quickly became evident how vitally important Stevenson is for both patient care and as an urgent community care rallying point in the event of emergencies.

While providing commendable, quality patient care in a time of crisis, the recent power outage highlighted the urgent need to redevelop and build a new hospital for this deserving community. SMH’s 52-year-old infrastructure simply cannot cope with the future healthcare demands and climate anomalies of the 21st century. “As we endeavour to truly build the best for this community through our redevelopment efforts, we are acutely aware that our status-quo. Our 1964 vintage facility is not built to accommodate the future healthcare needs of our growing and aging population,” says Alan Dresser, Chair of SMH Board of Directors. “A new 21st century hospital will allow us to properly mitigate future power outages that interfere with our community health care. The quality and dedication of our people is second-to-none and we need to ensure we match that quality with state-of-the-art facilities.”

Stevenson Memorial is a fully accredited hospital located in the Town of New Tecumseth, serving the Simcoe County community. Our mission is to help ensure that the residents of our communities can access safe, quality care where and when they need it.

Stevenson Memorial Hospital: We champion your care… every step of the way.