Delhi’s O’Connor Hospital unveiled its new state-of-the-art computed tomography scanner to the public Thursday, June 19.
“This journey for us has been about a year in the making at O’Connor Hospital,” President and CEO of Bassett Healthcare Staci Thompson said. “This equipment will serve Delhi and our surrounding communities.”
Peter Burghardt, manager of medical imaging for the Southern Region of Bassett Healthcare Network, said CT scanners are an important tool at critical access hospitals, which O’Connor is, and is used for diagnosis and for planning treatment and therapy for patients.
The new scanner “comes with great technology,” he said. It has an oversize table that will hold patients up to 450 pounds and the scans are more precise and quicker. The old scanner took 40 images per scan and the new one takes 120 images per scan. Patients using the old machine would have to hold their breath for 20 seconds, while the new scanner does the same task in six seconds.
“It’s much better for our patients,” Burghardt said. “It operates at anywhere between 60% and 80% radiation reduction with the use of AI.”
Katrina Schriver, imaging specialist and radiology site lead, said during a tour of the lab that the CT scanner is also more accommodating for tall people.
Burghardt said the number of CT scans over the past five years had increased dramatically. In 2020 the hospital conducted 2,000 scans and that had increased to 3,500 by 2024.
The CT scanner at O’Connor Hospital was the first of five new CT scanners Bassett Healthcare Network will install throughout its network, he said. This will allow staff to move around the network in case of staff shortages.
Thompson said the new scanner wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Peter Hamilton, the O’Connor Hospital Board of Trustees and Friends of Bassett.
“I was here for a board meeting and our CT scanner was down,” she said. “As CT scanners age, they go down more frequently, they have to be repaired. When you have a CT scanner that’s down, you have to have an ambulance sitting outside the operation at all times in order to take patients where they can get a proper diagnostic study.”
She said they spoke about how long the CT scanner would be down for repairs during the meeting, and “Pete said ‘I want to take this project on. I want to do this and I want the board of directors. This is so important for O’Connor Hospital. This is so important for what we do.'”
Hamilton, who has been on the board of directors for 35 years, and is regional vice president of Friends of Bassett Healthcare Network’s Board of Trustees, said he was so proud of what the community has done. The community raised the $750,000 for the new CT scanner and upgrades to the suite in less than a year. He especially thanked David and Joyce Barber of Hobart, who were the biggest donors.
Joyce Barber said she came to the O’Connor emergency room a few years ago after she accidentally cut the tip of a finger off while pruning hedges and was impressed by the care she received. Soon after retirement she joined the board of trustees. She and her husband didn’t have any children and spent time looking for a place where their money would “do the most work” and decided on O’Connor Hospital.
The new CT scanner was installed in February and Schriver spent a week in Cleveland, Ohio learning how to use the equipment. Once the scanner was installed, technicians spent at week at O’Connor Hospital teaching other radiologists how to use the machine.
About 500 scans have been made on the new scanner since February, Burghardt said.
Schriver showed images of a test scan of a toy lizard and how many angles technicians can view.