Officials at Windsor Regional Hospital are still looking for funding for a second table at the catheterization lab.

President and CEO David Musyj says tells CTV News the funding was promised four years ago.

“To say we are in 2018 and we haven’t moved ahead is a big disappointment,” says Musyj.

The first cath table was installed at WRH in 2005, and was replaced in March. WRH says the lab, inside the Ouellette campus performs around three thousand operations every year.

Musyj says that number could double if the provincial government provided the funding, and it would prevent patients from travelling to London or Detroit for immediate care.

Cath lab director, Dr. Kushel Dighe, claims Windsor's lab is the only one in the province operating 24/7 with only one table. The lab mainly performs cardiac angioplasty, which is considered a less invasive procedure for patients suffering from heart attacks compared to other techniques such as bypass surgery.

“We’ve been waiting for four years,” says Musyj. “There’s no reason why this project shouldn’t be going ahead immediately.”

The cost to add a second table is estimated at $10-million. The province would be expected to fund $7-million to $8-million of that total.

A statement from the Ministry of Health says “planning for the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Day Surgery project is being carried out in conjunction with work under way to plan to for the new hospital in Windsor.”

But Musyj tells CTV News the project has nothing to do with the new acute care facility.

“Nothing to do with the mega hospital because it's something that needs to be done now,” says Musyj. “it will eventually be moved to the mega hospital but every moment we wait is more time a patient has to wait."

New statistics from the Canadian Institute for Health Information finds patients who undergo cardiac surgery at Windsor's cath lab have a 98 per cent survival rate. That number is above both the provincial and national averages.

Musyj says he hopes the next premier will see the importance of the project and act immediately.