Health Sciences North received a generous $500,000 donation from Carman and Sandy Fielding on Nov. 7 that will be used to purchase new MRI equipment for the hospital.
The timing for the announcement of the donation could not have been more seredipitous, as the hospital's current MRI equipment is nearing the end of its life cycle and was actually down on the day that the Fielding's made their donation.
Health Sciences North's current MRI equipment is roughly 10 years old and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every year, approximately 13,000 MRI tests are performed at HSN to support the treatment of 600,000 Northern Ontario residents.
For patients who require MRI scans, the wait time at HSN is nearly triple that of the provincial target. Nine out 10 adult HSN patients needing an MRI wait as long as 93 days for their scan, compared to the provincial target of 28 days.
"Thank you very much Carman and Sandy for this very generous gift, you obviously worked very hard to create that wealth and deciding to re-invest that wealth to the benefit of our patients means a lot to our staff and to the patients who will benefit from this gift," said Dominic Giroux, HSN president and CEO.
"The support of donors like you is critical in HSN's ability to ensure patients have access to advanced medical equipment in a timely manner in order to diagnose disease or injury, or monitor how well they're doing with treatment."
Health Sciences North is planning on purchasing two MRI scanners in the coming years with the first expected to be up and running sometime in the 2019-20 fiscal year. The second MRI scanner will be brought in during the 2020-21 fiscal year, at which point HSN will be able to run two scanners for 16 hours a day and increase their capacity by 33 per cent and operate at more patient-friendly hours.
The price tag for the two scanners and installation is $6.1 million. Health Sciences North Foundation will be raising the required funds to purchase and install the scanners and replace the current MRI.
"The provincial government does not fund capital equipment for hospitals, so we rely on generous donations like this particularly for large, very expensive pieces of equipment," said Mark Hartman, vice presdient, cancer and clinical support, HSN.
"Typically there's two issues with how old an MRI is, one is it starts to break down over time and wear out, the other is the technology becomes obsolete."
The plan is for HSN to cycle through their existing MRI and make it the secondary machine when the first new scanner arrives. When the hospital is able to purchase a second new MRI, the current machine will be put out to pasture and the hospital will boast two new scanners.
"At any given time we'll always have two scanners," said Hartman. "We'll have the capacity to add more hours of operation, right now we just can't physically add more hours to the day or more days to the week."
When it comes to staffing the machines, Hartman says that the hospital would start out with spreading the current load of work among the staff between the two units and eventually increase staffing when funding becomes available for more staff.
The Fielding family name is familiar one in the Sudbury community, and have been at the forefront of a number of charitable donations to different organizations and causes in Greater Sudbury.
Carman and Sandy Fielding were looking for worthy cause to donate to and the health care sector was their first stop.
"We sat down with Dominic (Giroux) and discussed with him, there's always things needed in health care," said Sandy. "The MRI was their biggest priority so we're so happy to help."
Carman and Sandy had at least a dozen of their family members in attendance for the funding announcement - what Carman referred to as "a small part of the family" - and the two spoke of the importance of giving and spreading that message to the younger generations of their family.
"It's been generations of our family appreciating this community," said Carman. "I just hope that we're setting a good example for the younger generation and hope that our friends will take heed and get on board with helping this cause."
