New diagnostic equipment to improve patient care in North Okanagan

A new multi-million dollar CT scanner at Vernon Jubilee Hospital (VJH) is expected to increase access to timely diagnoses and treatments for patients in the North Okanagan.

A new multi-million dollar state-of-the-art CT scanner at Vernon Jubilee Hospital (VJH)  is expected to increase access to timely diagnoses and treatments in B.C.’s North Okanagan.

“There isn’t a single area of medicine that CT scans are not used … in neurology for strokes and emergency for strokes and trauma and cardiology, respiratory,” said Dr. Ed Hardy, an oncologist at VJH.

Up until last fall, the hospital only had one CT scanner but now it has two thanks to a successful $6.3 million fundraising campaign spearheaded by the Vernon Jubilee Hospital Foundation (VJHF).

“It’s huge for the region,” said Kate McBrearty, VJH Foundation executive director. “And we have to remember how vast our region is.  We’re a regional hospital so obviously a lot of people, really from around the area will come here for their CT scans now.”

The impact of the additonal CT scanner is expected to increase access to timely diagnoses and treatments, which in turn means faster and improved patient care.

“I think the major thing … with two scanners we’ll be able to significantly increase our capacity for doing the scans we need,” Hardy said.

The second CT scanner was brought online in November and there’s already been a 36 per cent increase in the number of scans conducted over the same period when there was just one scanner available.

“When we had just one scanner, you would have your patients who were scheduled in, but then there’d be a multi-vehicle trauma on the highway or something, which of course is never scheduled and those people would need to be scanned urgently or somebody coming up with stroke and so that would bump your schedule patients because you can’t do both,” Hardy said.