Northern Health spreads some money around the North

The Opinion 250 website is reporting on the plans of Northern Health to allocate 4.6 million dollars in funding to a number of facilities in the Northern Health region.

Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace will receive a share of the money, while the Prince George Regional Hospital appears set to receive the bulk of the funding.

$4.6 Million For Northern Health Projects
By 250 News
Thursday, August 02, 2007 02:33 PM

Northern Health has received $4.6 million in regional funding for several projects under the Province's Health Innovation Fund.

The key projects affecting the region include:

CT Angiography Services: This initiative will help improve diagnosis times of patients with chest pain. The new service will increase diagnostic imaging capabilities in Northern BC, and potentially reduce the need for patients to travel to Vancouver for testing. The new CT scanner at Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace can offer this service following additional staff training. $33,000 from the Health Innovation Fund will pay for the training and operational costs to run this new service.

Prince George Regional Hospital will receive capital funding to acquire a second CT scanner with the required processing capacity and software for this service. The total investment for PGRH covering the new unit and operating costs will be $1.478 million.

Integrated Health Networks- Primary Health Care System: as part of NH’s Care North Strategy, this project will help to provide better care for people , such as Aboriginal people and the elderly, who experience chronic diseases. The region will share in $2.73 million dollars in funding.

“Emergency Department Information Systems (EDIS) Implementation: $420,000 for better patient information to help improve patient flow through the Mills Memorial Hospital Emergency Department. The initiative will expand the current EDIS used at Prince George Regional Hospital to Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace and to Fort St. John Hospital.

Northern Health CEO Cathy Ulrich says the projects will be positive on several levels "Our projects through the Health Innovation Fund will help improve the quality of care for patients, better manage both chronic and acute illnesses, and help improve efficiency within our facilities.”