Retired Toronto firefighter Steve Yurkiw said nothing was going to stop him visiting the Haliburton hospital Feb. 3 for the delivery of the community’s new $800,000 CT mammography unit.
After relocating to his Redstone River property in 2020, Yurkiw said he’s experienced first-hand the benefits of Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS) expanding its diagnostic imaging over the past year.
The hospital has invested more than $6 million on a new CT scanner, mammography unit, and x-ray machine. The CT was delivered last summer, providing a local option for County residents in need of testing to diagnose life-threatening conditions such as stroke, internal trauma, and blood clots. Previously, patients were transferred to hospitals in Lindsay, Bracebridge, or Peterborough – taking ambulances and medics away from the community for hours at a time.
“The addition of CT last year probably saved my life,” Yurkiw told The Highlander.
Waking up one day feeling unwell, Yurkiw drove himself to the Haliburton hospital. He was having trouble breathing and, upon arrival, was rushed through emergency. Doctors quickly decided he needed specialist care at a larger facility – an air ambulance was called to transport him to the city, but there wasn’t one available. Instead, Haliburton EMS carried out the transfer on the road.
“It was only here and available because of the hard work these people did raising money for CT. The staff were only able to transfer me because they weren’t transferring someone else,” Yurkiw noted.
He had another flare up later that summer. After calling 911, an ambulance crew was at his front door within 30 minutes. He was diagnosed with a blood clot, receiving a CT in Haliburton. On his drive home, he tuned into MooseFM where he learned about the station’s annual radiothon supporting HHHS.
Service coming this month
“It was almost like an epiphany, I knew right away that I wanted to help,” Yurkiw said.
A full-time Toronto firefighter for 36 years, he had connections with Starfield, which makes fire bunker gear. He wanted custom pink equipment that he could wear while fundraising for the mammography unit. Yurkiw spent a day downtown last August, on the final day of the Radiothon, encouraging people to donate.
He managed to fill a boot with cash and coins in a few short hours, raising $3,000 of the radiothon’s record $537,000 rake-in.
“There was a young lad from the high school who had this ashtray full of coins that he said he’d been wanting to give to a good cause,” Yurkiw said. “One man threw $20 into the boot but after asking what it was going towards, took the $20 out and replaced it with a $100 bill.”
After having three friends diagnosed with breast cancer in recent years, Yurkiw thinks it’s great that County residents will have better access to screening in their home community.
Building momentum
HHHS president and CEO, Veronica Nelson, said the addition of mammography services in Haliburton has been a long time coming.
“It’s going to impact so many women. Just the fact they won’t have to travel anymore for a full clinical diagnosis… after the addition of CT last year, this just adds to the momentum of improving services in the County,” Nelson said.
The new Siemens Mammomat B.brilliant system will be operational later this month. Nelson said Haliburton will be “one of only two or three” hospitals in Ontario with this level of machine. She hopes it will help with physician recruitment and retention.
Three new staff have been hired to process and complete tests for both CT and mammography. Nelson said breast screening patients can be in and out within 20 minutes. Some bookings have already been made for later this month.
Nelson said she hopes to receive Canadian Association of Radiologists Mammography (CAR) accreditation in early spring, which will enable the hospital to process referrals through the Ontario Breast Screening Program.
A grand opening for the unit will be held in March.
“I said last year that CT was the most significant addition this hospital had seen in its 23-year history, and bringing mammography online just adds to that,” Nelson said. “This machine is comfortable, the compression release is much quicker. It also acts as a CT, so takes a bunch of images and puts them together into a data set that a radiologist can scroll through to better identify potential issues. We’re very excited that we’re able to bring this technology here.”
