DISPUTE OVER NEW SCANNER
Head of nuclear medicine feels ‘ blindsided’
The provincial government is making an expensive mistake by putting a new PET/CT scanner at Windsor Regional Hospital, the hospital’s head of nuclear medicine said Friday.
Dr. Kevin Tracey, who also coowns the local medical clinic that currently provides PET scans for the community, said it will cost at least $1 million extra to install the high-tech machine at the hospital, since a section of the Windsor Regional Cancer Centre must be rebuilt. He thinks a PET scanner should only go the hospital when the new building is complete. Plus, Tracey said hospital overhead is more than at his Precision Diagnostic Imaging clinic, which the Ministry of Health and LongTerm Care currently pays to conduct PET/CT scans at about $1,000 a pop, including isotopes. “Ultimately, I’m ecstatic that the ministry is finally going to fund our PET unit in Windsor and units all over the province,” Tracey said Friday, a day after Ontario announced it will pay up to $3.5 million for a state-of-the-art PET/CT machine, which should start running at Windsor Regional in December. “We just want them to fund it right now, to get it operational in the centre (Precision Diagnostic Imaging ) where it should be, which has been operating for the past seven years.”
Tracey, who was not invited to Thursday’s news conference at Windsor Regional, said he and his staff were shocked by the announcement, which he learned about only hours before through a call from the Health Ministry. “Our staff has really been blindsided and devastated and are very upset,” said Tracey, who has three full-time and three part-time employees. “If this decision is not reversed, it will be a death knell for us. “To have it pulled like this from us with no warning and no consultation is shocking. And it’s a really disgusting way for a government to behave.”
Tracey said he and his partner have invested $3 million to $4 million in the business, which has provided PET scans for more than 2,000 patients since 2011. “The existing PET/CT scanner at Precision Diagnostic Imaging (PDI) is operating beyond its expected lifespan and has been experiencing regular unplanned downtime,” Health Ministry spokesman David Jensen said in an email. “During these downtimes, patient care in the region is impacted through increased wait times and extended travel distances. “The new PET/CT scanner at WRH will reduce the risk associated with the aging scanner at PDI, and will support patient access in the Erie St. Clair LHIN, to ensure no impact to patient care in the future.”
Jensen said that, according to the Independent Health Facilities Act, the ministry cannot by law provide equipment to a private facility.
Tracey said he also learned Friday that, because of a change in the funding model, he will have to wait two months for the province to pay money owed to his Howard Avenue clinic. “They are putting every barrier in place to make our delivery of services as difficult as possible,” Tracey said. Tracey, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador and trained on PET scanning at UCLA in the early 1990s, was recruited to start a nuclear medicine department in Windsor 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Tracey questions the percentage of patients that officials say leave the community for PET scans. According to Cancer Care Ontario, in 2016-2017 at least 57 per cent of PET/CT scans for the Erie St. Clair LHIN were performed outside the area. Tracey thinks it’s more like five to 10 per cent.
He does acknowledge, however, the 10-year-old machine he rents goes down occasionally. Two years ago, it took a $100,000 donation from Windsor philanthropist Al Quesnel to keep it running. Tracey’s clinic is on track this year to conduct 500 PET scans — a record.