Staff shortage shuts down CT scanner at Surrey hospital overnight

A sign at the entrance to Surrey Memorial Hospital is seen on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022. (CTV)

For the second time this month, CTV News has learned that CT scans were unavailable at Surrey Memorial Hospital overnight due to staffing shortages.

Fraser Health confirmed, in an email, that scans were unavailable at the hospital – which has the busiest emergency department in the country – between 11 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 a.m. Sunday.

“We needed to implement a temporary, eight-and-a-half-hour diversion of patients requiring overnight CT scans to Royal Columbian Hospital. This was after we exhausted all other options to cover this brief gap in the schedule,” a spokesperson wrote.

“During this brief period, no patients at Surrey Memorial Hospital required diversion.”

Recruitment is ongoing in order to hire enough staff to meet the demand for medical imaging in the region, the email continued.

After a similar situation at SMH less than three weeks ago, the Medical Staff Association told CTV News that while there have been improvements and investments in the past year, they are “deeply concerned about the lack of access to critical imaging resources.”

In a statement, MSA president, Dr. Amoljeet Lail, wrote that non-urgent access to medical imaging in Surrey can take months – for pregnancy ultrasounds or CT scans for colon cancer, for example – but that he has special concern about hospital access.

“Surrey Memorial has the busiest emergency department in the country and having no access to a CT scan even for a few hours can lead to catastrophic delays in diagnosing and managing some of our sickest patients,” he said.

Adrian Dix, when asked about the issue earlier this month, said the number of CT scans in the province has increased by 240,000 per year since he became minister of health and 24/7 capacity for medical imaging is something that has dramatically expanded in the province.

“It’s true that, in that case, that CT scanner was closed overnight. No one needed to be transferred in that evening to receive such a scan,” he said on March 10.

“The reason we see occasional shutdowns overnight is that we’re operating overnight.”

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Penny Daflos