Kemptville Hospital releases video celebrating launch of new joint replacement services

Kemptville Hospital CEO Colin Goodfellow (left), and well-known orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Geoffrey Dervin, who performs surgery at both Kemptville Hospital and The Ottawa Hospital

MARCH 7, 2012 – In the same week that its 100th orthopaedic surgery patient received her new knee, Kemptville District Hospital has released a video celebrating the launch of the program in late 2011, when it became one of a handful of small hospitals in North America performing this type of surgery. The entire organization had worked together to bring the program to launch in six short months. In the process, Kemptville Hospital had been transformed.

The new Total Joint Replacement program is an innovative partnership between this small rural hospital and one of the largest teaching hospitals in Canada: The Ottawa Hospital. The program sees surgeons from The Ottawa Hospital performing joint replacement procedures in Kemptville Hospital’s state of the art operating facilities, reducing wait times for patients throughout the region and cutting down on overcrowding in The Ottawa Hospital. Knee recipients in Kemptville have appreciated the patient-focused care; the hospital consistently ranks among the top hospitals in Ontario for both patient and employee satisfaction.

To make the video, titled “Kemptville Hospital: A Different Organization Now”, a group of 20 staff, administrators, physicians and volunteers sat down to talk about their experiences in preparing for the new inpatient surgical program. The video celebrates the sense of joy and accomplishment that permeated the hospital the day the first knee replacement surgeries were performed. It also speaks to the power available to an organization, and in fact to an entire system, when good people are happy to work together to build healthier communities. Kemptville Hospital staff recognized that as a small organization they had the potential to help solve a big problem, the problem of long wait times for this type of surgery. The video demonstrates how the people at Kemptville Hospital embraced the opportunity to be a different kind of small hospital, and how it felt to be engaged in meeting a system-wide challenge.

More than 100 staff and friends of Kemptville Hospital gathered for the live release of the video at a celebration of the new surgical program, held at the hospital on March 7.

About Kemptville District Hospital

Kemptville District Hospital is a fully accredited healthcare facility committed to building healthier communities. We are distinct within the provincial health system as a model of hospital-led integrated health services. We operate on two sites and provide primary care management services, acute care hospital services, advanced orthopaedic care and pride ourselves on being a good partner within the system. Kemptville Hospital consistently ranks among the top hospitals in Ontario for both patient and employee satisfaction.

For further information contact:

Jenny Read, Communications Lead

Tel: 613-258-6133 ext. 223

Email: jread@kdh.on.ca