TORONTO — In 1923, the Hebrew Maternity and Convalescent Hospital, later renamed Mount Sinai Hospital, opened its doors on Yorkville Avenue with 33 beds.

Coming full circle, the hospital, now a 472-bed academic health science centre on University Avenue, recently opened the new David and Stacey Cynamon Mother and Baby Unit, an expansion of the Frances Bloomberg Centre for Women’s and Infants’ Health. The expansion is part of the six newly built floors on the Murray Street side of the hospital.

Within two years, as part of the development project, the program will be expanded to include an enhanced neonatal intensive care unit, five new operating rooms, and labour and delivery rooms that are bigger and better equipped to deliver babies of high-risk mothers.

Joseph Mapa, president and CEO of Mount Sinai, said in a telephone interview that he “can’t help but note the irony that the hospital began as a maternity hospital, and is now starting to rebuild with a women’s health centre.”

The design of the new unit includes decentralized care stations, which allow clinicians to be closer to their patients at all times; medicine cabinets in each room, which make it easier for nurses to tend to patients in a more timely manner; more private rooms, which help to reduce cross-contamination, and comfortable chairs for breastfeeding, which also double as recliners for overnight support partners.

“For Mount Sinai [this expansion] is monumental. [The hospital] is entering a historic new era,” Mapa said.

“We are re-imaging the footprint of the entire hospital to further strengthen our commitment to delivering excellence in patient and family-centred care and clinical outcomes.”