Patients being moved for CT scans with both RIH scanners temporarily offline

Photo: Interior Health

Patients in Kamloops in need of a CT scan are being transported to facilities in other nearby communities as staffers work to get Royal Inland Hospital’s lone operational scanner back online.

Interior Health officials said they hope to get the machine up and running in the coming hours.

It’s been offline since Tuesday afternoon, when required maintenance work forced its shutdown.

“We are working as quickly as possible to bring the CT scanner back online and hope to have it back in service by tonight [Wednesday],” Kim Perris, IH’s director of medical imaging for Thompson-Cariboo, said in a statement to Castanet Kamloops.

“Patients requiring emergency scans will use other imaging modalities or will be transferred to other IH hospitals for a CT scan.”

Until last month, RIH had two operational CT scanners. Flooding caused by a burst pipe on Dec. 23 destroyed one scanner and an X-ray machine.

Two of RIH’s X-ray machines remain in operation.

Perris said replacement machines have been ordered and are expected to be operational sometime in March.

“Outpatients requiring general X-ray exams such as chest knee and spine X-rays are being referred by family care providers to one of the two private X-ray clinics in Kamloops,” she said.

EDITOR'S NOTE: One CT scanner was operational at RIH as of the evening of Jan. 19.