Sioux Lookout MRI campaign officially kicks off 

Tim Brody - Editor

The campaign to bring an MRI unit to Sioux Lookout is officially underway.
The campaign officially kicked off last Friday with a press conference at the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre (SLMHC).
SLMHC announced in February that it will receive base funding from Ontario Health North West to support the operation of a new Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Scanner. SLMHC is responsible for all capital costs associated with construction to house the new MRI Scanner, as well as the MRI itself. The cost is estimated around seven-million dollars. 
The MRI campaign being undertaken by the SLMHC Foundation will directly support the capital costs associated with the new MRI Scanner. 
“The SLMHC Foundation Board is extremely excited about this great news” said Christine Hoey, SLMHC Foundation President, in a Dec. 1 media release. “We want to have the MRI operational as soon as possible, so we will be reaching out to the community and all the areas we service to help us reach our goal.”
Hoey said that as of the end of October, the Foundation has $1.5 million in the bank they are putting towards the start of the MRI campaign, leaving an estimated amount of $5.5 million to be raised. 
SLMHC serves approximately 30,000 residents across a geographical area of approximately 385,000 square km. “This project however, will also service a secondary catchment area of surrounding communities containing an approximate 10, 673 residents, bringing the total population that will benefit from these services locally to over 40,600. Currently, patients endure wait times and required travel for MRI scans in both Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. An MRI unit at SLMHC will improve access to health care service for our patients, and it will reduce wait times as patients look to access MRI scans,” SLMHC informed.
“Members of Sioux Lookout and surrounding communities face numerous barriers when trying to access equitable health care in Canada. By obtaining an MRI scanner at SLMHC, we minimize some of these barriers, such as improving access to specialized and essential imaging services, reducing financial burden to travel, and reducing the distances for clients to travel. At SLMHC, we acknowledge the relationship of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of a person contributing to their whole-self being in a state of complete wellness. Close to home access to MRI could mean less stress, uncertainty and hardship on families when accessing health care, and possibly improving the health outcomes of our community and the surrounding areas,” shared Arianna Kitching, SLMHC Diagnostic Imaging Manager. 
“Having an MRI in Sioux Lookout is another important step forward in providing services closer to home for our patients, which also includes culturally-appropriate care and interpreter services. Having an MRI on-site will also, in-turn, help with recruitment and retention of physicians. Having the ability to provide this service enhances both the patient and physician experience at SLMHC,” said Dean Osmond, SLMHC President and Chief Executive Officer. 
During the MRI kick off press conference, SLMHC General Surgeon Justin Poling spoke to how an MRI unit will assist physicians and benefit patients.
“An x-ray takes sort of a 2-D picture, like a photograph. CT and MRI allows us to do like a 3-D  picture and see the whole depth of the tissue,” he explained.
“A CT scan (a unit the hospital currently has) is quicker and more accessible, cheaper, but the MRI definitely gives us much better pictures,” he said.
Poling showed those at the press conference example images of dense breast tissue with a small lesion – one taken with a mammogram, the other with an MRI.
“Using MRI, that lesion lights up like a Christmas tree. It allows us to identify. It allows us to treat,” he said, adding, “That’s the difference between us detecting and identifying a cancer and not finding that cancer at all.”
“A lot of the time there’s recommendations to have an MRI because we don’t see certain things on CT that we can see on MRI. If a doctor is trying to rule something out, we may not be able to rule it out unless they get the MRI,” Kitching shared.
“When you look at an MRI now, MRI is almost a standard of care,” Osmond said. “I touched earlier about physician recruitment and retention, the new physicians that are coming here, they’re used to having this equipment right at their fingertips. They’re used to diagnosing with tests. So, whether that’s lab work... they want to see these tests so that they can actually look at them and diagnose. Medicine’s changed and the way the physicians are working within the system and utilizing all of the technology that is out there. They come here, 80 percent of our physicians are locums, and they come from areas that are used to having this right at their fingertips. It’s a tool that they believe is part of a standard of care and it’s not something that we should wish we had or want, it’s something that we should have.”
I think from a big picture perspective the benefits are just incredible,” Osmond stated.
“Since 2018 we’ve put in business cases to the Ministry (of Health) asking to be a site for an MRI. As of last year we finally got approved for the operating dollars,” Osmond said, further stating, “The only unfortunate part about this is that the Ministry offers no capital with that operating and so for a site like ours we have no internal room to actually house an MRI.”
“Hopefully we can raise the money. We know that it’s going to be an uphill battle to get the funds from the smaller communities like ours, but I’m also still working with the Ministry and still have proposals in with the Ministry to try and get some help with that capital,” Osmond said.
“We know that Fort Frances has been given an allocation as well but they’re in exactly the same situation we are that they haven’t raised the funds. Kenora is also looking to get approval for an MRI,” he shared.
“We have an amount that we think is doable for the surrounding area to raise, so anybody that is interested in being involved, whether it’s helping us fundraise or making donations; we will be accepting the money raised from Skip to Equip, which is $130,000, which will be on top of this,” Hoey said.
She added, “We’ve had some input from different people from the community that are interesting in donating as well, so the hopes are we’ll have a couple of big announcements between now and January.”
“We’re going to be out in the public, we’re going to be out in the community and we’re going to be reaching out to the surrounding communities,” Hoey said. 
“We’ve got a couple of things on the back burner. Melissa (Slade, Donor Relations/Operations Coordinator SLMHC Foundation) is going to be working on what we call a Christmas card campaign, that’s going to happen this month. She’s going to be sending out Christmas cards with donation forms in them for people that have donated to the hospital in the last two years and asking people to donate with the opportunity to give to the equipment fund, primarily for the MRI. We also have  bunch of different little things that we want to do throughout the year. We want to have an event of some sort in February. We hope to have another one in hopefully in April. We’ll probably do something at Blueberry Festival and then of course Skip to Equip again next fall and we’re involved in all of that.” 
“We deserve it. We deserve the healthcare that everybody’s getting in the major centres so we need to make this happen,” Hoey concluded. 
Anyone looking for more information about how to contribute to the campaign can contact the Foundation office 807-737-7997 or by email at [email protected].