Queens General Hospital Foundation investing millions to expand access to health care
Morgan Sampson, echocardiogram technician, and Queens General Hospital Foundation trustees Kelly Whalen, Kerry Morash, Janice Reynolds and Al Doucet with the new echocardiogram at Queens General Hospital in Liverpool. (Queens General Hospital Foundation photo)
Queens County residents will be able to stay closer to home for vital testing, thanks to an investment by the Queens General Hospital Foundation.
The foundation recently invested almost $400,000 to install a new echocardiogram and cardiopulmonary exercise testing machine at Queens General in Liverpool.
Al Doucet, a retired physician who is chairman of the hospital foundation, said that means that cardiologists and internal medicine specialists can now see more people here.
“They’re significant because they bring to Liverpool testing that otherwise was not available anywhere else, people had to travel for this,” Doucet told QCCR.
“But also, people that are in hospital, that are hospital patients, this equipment, especially the echocardiogram, it’s movable so that it can go up to the floors where people are sick so they don’t even have to come out of their hospital rooms and we can also use it on people who are sick in the emergency department.”
Queens General already has stress-testing equipment that involves patients using a treadmill to measure the heart’s response to physical activity.
But the new equipment uses a stationary bike to measure the response of your lungs as well. Internal medicine specialist Dr. Jeff Ratushny, who is based in Bridgewater, has a special interest in pulmonary stress testing, Doucet said.
“So this is an upgrade on our stress-testing equipment to add the pulmonary component to it. And that was really because Dr. Rathushny has a special interest in that. For our health professionasl that we have here, we want to give them the equipment that they need and that they want to give them the ability to come here and stay.”
The echocardiogram cost $275,000, while the exercise testing equipment cost $93,000. Those were just two of the significant contributions to health care in Queens County made by the foundation in the past year.
It has donated more than $1 million for equipment, training and other things to help attract more health professionals to the area and to make health care more accessible locally.
“Our mandate does not confine us to just the hospital. But everything that we look at it’s in the lens of how can we make this a better place to live for people, how can we make it the best place for care, how can we put the best equipment in that we can retain professionals that are coming to work here.”
The foundation is also contributing $725,000 toward the establishment of a new MRI machine at South Shore Regional Hospital in Bridgewater.
And Doucet said they’re investing up to $3.5 million in a new CT scanner at Queens General. He said they’re working with Nova Scotia Health to recruit the technicians to staff that equipment properly.
The foundation relies on donations and investments to fund its work. Doucet said its volunteer board of trustees is concerned about financing projects big and small.
Whether that’s a new floor-cleaning machine, doing things to help staff morale or sprucing up the outside of the hospital with art and gardens, he said it’s all part of making Queens General a better place to work and visit.
“There’s very few hospitals that you’ll see flowers that are blooming at the front door. So we want to make the hospital not so clinical and not so sterile. We want it to be an inviting place so that it reduces the anxiety people have as they come in.”
Doucet said the foundation has helped recruit six physicians to the area in the past two years. And thanks to things like their online presence, they’re also attracting other professionals like nurses to the area.
But he said there’s more to do. That’s why they continue to recruit with the goal of having the Queens General ER return to being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“The way it used to be when I was practising and the way it is now, things have definitely changed and we have to adapt to it. So having the foundation makes it at least easier for us to do that.”
For more information on the Queens General Hospital Foundation, visit their website at qghfoundation.ca, or their medical recruitment site at doctors-wanted.ca.
Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com
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