November 24, 2021

This Holiday Season, the Hospital is raising funds to bring a CT Suite to its Emergency Department, and you can help.

When emergencies happen, you need access to the right care, right away. That’s why St. Joe’s is planning to place a new, state-of-the-art CT scanner inside our Emergency Department.

“Every day, the patients we care for in Emergency are fighting for their lives. They could be victims of a car accident, experiencing a heart attack or a stroke, or having severe symptoms that don’t seem to have a root cause,” says Dr. Greg Rutledge, Chief of Emergency Medicine at St. Joe’s. “Before we can recommend a treatment pathway for these patients, we often need to see what’s happening on the inside. That’s why a CT scan is so important to the care we provide in the Emergency Department.”

Right now, if it’s not immediately clear what’s wrong with a patient in emergency, they may be taken for a CT scan in our Diagnostic Imaging Centre. The scan is reviewed by a radiologist and sent back up to the attending physician in Emergency. And all of this needs to happen before we can diagnose or treat them. But if St. Joe’s had a CT scanner right inside our Emergency Department, we could save precious minutes and precious lives, too.

Benefits Beyond the Emergency Department

The CT scanner in Emergency will also help address a backlog in diagnostic imaging procedures, and reduce wait times for these vital scans. It will assist with CT-guided biopsies for cancer patients and limit the need to transport patients between departments, minimizing risk of cross-contamination and preserving precious PPE.

Help Build a Home for our CT Scanner

The good news is, St. Joe’s already has a state-of-the-art CT Scanner on-site. We just need to build a specialized home for it within our Emergency Department. This holiday season, please consider making a gift to St. Joe’s. By doing so, you’ll be giving our patients access to a speedier diagnosis. Because, when an emergency happens, every second counts. To make a gift, visit: stjoesfoundation.ca/CTSuite.