Province to provide $2M for CT scanner in Melfort after decade of waiting

The Saskatchewan government is fulfilling a decade-long promise for a CT scanner in the town of Melfort.

The provincial budget includes $2 million for a new scanner in the northeastern centre, which Mayor Rick Lang says will dramatically cut down travel time for patients in the region who might otherwise have to travel as far as Saskatoon for the key diagnostic test.

“It’s hard to find someone willing to spend an eight-hour day driving to Saskatoon and back,” Lang said.

The region’s interest in a CT scanner dates back decades.

Dr. Lionel Lavoie, former president of the Canadian Medical Association, said a Japanese firm originally installed a CT scanner in the town in the 1990s as part of a demonstration model, which led to early talks about purchasing one.

Then the province entered a recession deficit and rural hospitals were shuttered; Lavoie said the town lost nearly all its physicians.

Because the northeastern region was one of relatively few in the province without a scanner, Lavoie said patients from the surrounding region would often have to drive to Saskatoon, Prince Albert or even as far as Regina to get the diagnostic test, which is used to detect and diagnose a variety of diseases and injuries. He recalls sending patients as far as Calgary when he was a practising doctor.

“The bottom line will be that it will be the patients in our areas for many years who have sacrificed nights, weekends and holidays to have that service,” Lavoie said.

The issue of a scanner was raised again around 2010 by then-finance minister and local MLA Rod Gantefoer and local health officials, who worried too many patients were spending holidays and long weekends to get the basic diagnostic test.

In 2010 the Kelsey Trail Health Region was promised $500,000 in funding for the equipment, training and staffing, with the goal that a scanner would be installed within two to three years.

“But somehow, it got lost in the shuffle,” Gantefoer said.

The funds for the scanner were not promised until this year’s cost estimates were released in March.

SHA spokeswoman Amanda Purcell said it’s not yet determined when the scanner will actually arrive in the town.

Gantefoer and Lavoie said the scanner will help the town realize ambitions of becoming a more dynamic rural health centre for the northeast of the province.

Both were heavily involved in a local donation drive to raise $600,000 for a new heliport attached to the town’s hospital, which will provide rapid air transportation to Saskatoon for patients in critical condition who can’t be treated locally. A tender for the heliport was released this week with a stated goal of having the project completed this summer.