Surrey Memorial Hospital lost CT scanner for hours, raising concerns of possible 'catastrophic delays'

Surrey Memorial Hospital, which has the busiest emergency department in the country, lost access to a critical piece of medical imaging for six hours over the weekend due to a staffing shortage, CTV News has learned.

Fraser Health confirmed the hospital was essentially “on diversion” which means any patient who urgently needed a CT scan would’ve been taken to Royal Columbian Hospital across the Fraser River by ambulance. However, there was no such need during the service disruption on Saturday.

“We can't always staff all of our lines,” said Dr. Marietta Van Den Berg, the acting site medical director at the hospital, explaining that their technologists are in short supply and illness or absences are typically covered by coworkers coming in on days off or working overtime to maintain service.

“Radiographers, radiologists, all of the techs that do all this work, it is a lot and they pull off almost a miracle every day, just with the number of investigations that they manage to do,” she added.

Van Den Berg acknowledges that they’ve made significant improvements to the nursing staff levels at SMH in the past year, rarely working short anymore, but that there’s considerable strain among the technological staff and physicians. It was nearly a year ago that the hospital’s doctors warned the staffing conditions were dangerous and that patients faced perilous waits in the emergency department.

In the wake of Saturday’s CT service outage, the Medical Staff Association said 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 an email 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 emphasized.

Lail and Ven Den Berg both thanked their technologist colleagues for going above and beyond to maintain service, which Van Den Berg say speaks to the dedication of the medical personnel at SMH.

“Every single day, thousands of us get up and come to work and we are determined to do our best for you under very challenging circumstances,” she said. “Thank you for being patient with us.”