It has been ten years since CT Scans were introduced to the Sunrise Health region. Over 53,000 scans later and the machine will soon reach the end of its service life, so it is time for a replacement.
The Government of Saskatchewan is pitching in $600,000 towards the project, which has an estimated total cost of $1.2 million.
The need for a replacement scanner is urgent, for a simple reason, parts availability explains Ross Fisher, executive director of the Health Foundation. The current CT Scanner is ten years old, and as a result the manufacturer has discontinued the parts needed to maintain it. There have also been reliability issues with frequent breakdowns. That means after this year, the service life for the scanner is over.
“A CT Scanner is pretty vital, it’s a key piece of diagnostic equipment for a regional hospital. In today’s world you really can’t be without one. We had 4,300 patients that used it last year, and we did about 7,500 scans.”
Greg Ottenbreit, Minister for Rural and Remote Health, says that the urgency of the replacement is a big reason why the provincial government put their support being buying a new machine. They see the need to maintain diagnostic imaging service as a high priority for the health care in the province, and as a result want to see the province’s health regions maintain their ability to serve patients.
“Diagnostic imaging is a big part of surgeries, but sometimes it’s an aid in reducing surgery wait times... When you look at diagnostic imaging it’s two fold. Sometimes it identifies the issue that needs to be addressed quite quickly, and sometimes it actually alleviates surgery because you find an issue isn’t quite as serious as you may have thought, or it might have taken exploratory surgery and tie up the OR. Sometimes from patients diagnostic imaging alleviates fear or stress, where they don’t know what’s going on and you get a diagnosis from a really advanced machine like this multi-slice CT scanner that can identify that it maybe it isn’t an issue.”
The area the scanner serves is another reason for the government support, as the scanner will serve everyone within the Sunrise Health Region, Ottenbreit says. Given the amount of use that the old scanner had, it made sense to ensure CT Scanning continued in the region.
“When we are able to do these scans in a more rural area like Yorkton, we are taking the pressure off our centres in Regina and Saskatoon.”
Having a new machine also means having a better machine. Fisher explains that much like most technology over the past decade, there have been major advances in CT Scanning. The current machine is a 16 slice scanner, but the new one will be a 256 slice scanner.
“The new equipment is faster, it will diagnose more conditions than we can currently, it will provide better quality images for diagnosis, it will do things we currently do, which is what you would expect from ten years of improvement in technology,” Fisher says.
Right now the Health Foundation has to come up with the remaining half of the budget, or $600,000. Fisher says that while this is a significant amount, there is an indication that the community is behind the project and sees the need for a new scanner.
One of those indications was the Health Foundation Radiothon, which was a big success. Fisher says it was the second best Radiothon to date, behind the campaign for digital mammography, raising $84,224,
“That tells me that people will be receptive when we go forward from here to carry out the rest of the fundraising campaign. It doesn’t tell me it will be easy to raise $600,000, but it tells me it will be doable.”
Ottenbreit is confident that the community will come on board to fund this needed piece of equipment.
“We’re very happy to partner with the health region and the Health Foundation, recognizing that the Health Foundation couldn’t do the extra fundraising without the help of the community. I know personally and professionally how good the community and the surrounding area are at raising money for things that are of importance, especially when it comes to health care,” Ottenbreit says.
“It’s great to be able to do an announcement like this so close to home.”
