Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is asking residents for their ideas and priorities as it develops its next five-year strategic plan, which will guide hospital decisions through 2031.
The hospital announced the public engagement opportunity on September 18, 2026. Community members can share feedback online through a dedicated link: bit.ly/TBRHSC-Strategic-Plan.
“Engagement with dedicated community members like you helped shape our last Strategic Plan, which contributed to extraordinary advances in health care across our region,” the hospital said in a statement. “As we build on the progress of Strategic Plan 2026, your input will be vital to shaping our next five-year plan.”
The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is a 425-bed acute care facility and the only tertiary care hospital in Northwestern Ontario, serving about 245,000 people across a region the size of France. The current plan, Strategic Plan 2026, was developed with input from over 120 engagement sessions involving more than 700 stakeholders and delivered all 26 planned initiatives, including advances in cardiovascular care, Indigenous health, and regional integration.
Patricia Lang, who served as Board Chair, emphasized that the hospital belongs to the community. “TBRHSC is not the Board’s hospital. It is not the staff’s hospital. It is yours,” she said in a June 2026 board report. “The people of Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario built this institution. They fund it, depend on it and must have a say in what it does next.”
The new plan will shape hospital activities and priorities as TBRHSC builds its $93-million Cardiovascular Surgery Program, the first of its kind in Northwestern Ontario, set to open in early 2028. The program will eliminate the need for patients to travel over 10 hours to Toronto for cardiac surgery.
Residents interested in influencing the future of regional health care can submit their feedback online at bit.ly/TBRHSC-Strategic-Plan. No deadline has been announced.
