By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
DUNNVILLE—The fundraising efforts of the Dunnville Healthcare and Hospital Foundation (DHHF) play a critical role in ensuring our local hospital is outfitted with the latest medical technology and equipment, allowing our healthcare professionals to deliver top-rate service close to home. Currently, the foundation is in the midst of a three-year plan to raise between $1.5 to $2 million toward the purchase of a new CT scanner.
Tom Dorland, Director of Diagnostic Imaging and Laboratory at HWMH, commented on how a new scanner will improve service: “A new CT scanner will come with additional options to improve image quality and minimize the radiation dose received by patients compared to our current scanner.”
He elaborated, “Major capital equipment, such as the CT scanner, comes with an eight-to-10-year lifespan. Similar to our vehicles, as our equipment ages it is prone to hardware breakdowns, which means the CT scanner is unavailable for patient testing until service is able to repair it. New models and software updates are continuously being released by all CT scanner vendors, which means a new CT scanner will have capabilities that are not available for our current equipment. Although our CT scanner is reliable, it has been in service for over 10 years, and we must prepare for its replacement.”
Dr. Gregory Mitten, Chief of Radiology at HWMH, called a new scanner “absolutely crucial and invaluable to not only the medical staff of HWMH, but also to the delivery of a modern healthcare system for the population served by HWMH.”
He called the hospital’s decision to purchase their original scanner a decade ago “very wise and forward thinking,” noting that machine has become an “absolutely essential part of the efficient provision of timely and accurate medical diagnosis and treatment to the population of Dunnville and the surrounding communities.”
He broke down how the equipment is utilized: “This CT scanner allows for a much quicker and efficient pathway towards the diagnosis and therefore the treatment of a whole host of medical conditions. Our CT scanner also allows for a much more efficient means of diagnosing a whole host of maladies and medical conditions – not only for the patients of the ER department but also our inpatient hospital population, plus the thousands of residents in the Haldimand, Norfolk, Niagara catchment regions who have much easier access to this diagnostic tool as outpatients.”
He said the significant percentage of seniors in the community make having a CT scanner close to home a no-brainer: “Our regional community has a significant percentage of older individuals who benefit immensely from much easier access to our local CT scanner – both for the diagnosis of their medical conditions but also as part of ongoing follow-up for assessing the effectiveness of treatments of many diseases, one of the most common being cancer treatment follow up.”
“It is imperative that we raise funds to purchase a new CT scanner going forward in order to continue to build upon the services that have been developed, expanded, and provided and have been become expected, routine, and essential to our population,” said Mitten, adding that it makes HWMH a more appealing employer to new physicians and medical staff who are trained on the equipment as part of their education.
He concluded, “Economically the sheer fact of having a CT scanner in our hospital makes Dunnville and the surrounding area a much more attractive place to live and attracts individuals and businesses whose employees expect these sorts of technologies as part of a viable community in which to live as well as to establish businesses.”
