Barrie Ontario region launches first PET/CT scanner

BARRIE, Ont. – The Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH), in Barrie, Ont., is now operating a PET/CT scanner that will benefit patients throughout the Simcoe Muskoka region. It’s the only hospital from Sudbury in the north to Newmarket in the south that is equipped with one.

“That’s a big geography to not have any coverage close to home for that, so having it in Barrie really covers the Simcoe Muskoka area to provide that for a large population that we have here, and we know our region is growing faster than the rest of the province,” Gail Hunt (pictured), RVH president and CEO, told CTV News.

Construction to create room for the new PET-CT scanner began two years ago in RVH’s Medical Imaging department, while the hospital received delivery of the scanner itself in March of last year.

“PET-CT was always that missing piece, but now we have it here, so the access is much easier for physicians getting the scans. Our waitlists are shorter than they would be at other places,” noted Dr. Cory Ozimok, RVH PET/CT clinical lead.

Only 16 of these scanners exist in Ontario across 10 different cities.

Equipping the Barrie hospital with the technology will save cancer patients “countless hours and travel miles.”

RVH said roughly 600 patients travel outside Simcoe Muskoka annually to access advanced diagnostic imaging.

The hospital’s regional cancer care centre opened in 2012, and RVH officials say it has since logged nearly one million patient visits.

They anticipate performing over 1,000 scans now that it is open.

Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) funded the $2.7-million cost of the PET/CT scanner, while a $1-million investment from the provincial government allowed RVH to renovate an already designated space within the hospital to house the new machine.

The PET/CT purchase was also assisted by several generous donors, in particular Barrie Welding and Machine, Western Mechanical Electrical Millwright Services, and Dr. Paul Voorheis, a longtime RVH radiologist, former imaging medical director and interim chief of staff, and his wife Jane.

Through the Keep Life Wild campaign, the RVH Foundation continues to raise money to expand the hospital’s life-saving regional programs like cancer, cardiac, and trauma while helping to expand the current campus in Barrie and build a new healthcare facility in Innisfil, which will be known as the south campus.