Photo caption: The Quinte Health Radiology Team (from left to right): Hailey Cripps, Karine Gauthier, Nicole Bond, Tammy Robson.
With growing demand for its Diagnostic Imaging services, Quinte Health has partnered to develop innovative solutions that address increased patient volumes and staffing shortages.
In this interview, Program Manager for Diagnostic Imaging, Tammy Robson highlights two key developments: a new Medical Radiation Technologist (MRT) program at Loyalist College that will help create a local talent pipeline, and the Canadian Medical Equipment Protection Plan’s (CMEPP) Equipment Coordination Service that creates a more streamlined process for managing equipment repairs, allowing staff to focus on patient care.
Tammy, can you talk about the current demand on diagnostic imaging services at Quinte Health?
Quinte Health is comprised of four hospitals: Belleville General Hospital, North Hastings Hospital (in Bancroft), Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital and Trenton Memorial Hospital. Together with my co-manager Lisa Camp, we have over 100 staff on our team who administer diagnostic services at the four sites. I oversee nuclear medicine, X-ray, CT, mammography, and nuclear medicine, while Lisa manages MRI, ultrasound, and cardiology.
In recent years – especially post-Covid – we’ve had a high staff turnover, coupled with recruiting challenges. This phenomenon is being experienced across the country. Staffing challenges at a time of increased patient volumes has been incredibly difficult to navigate.
Have the two combined forces – higher volumes and staff shortages – had an impact on the delivery of services?
Yes. For a short period of time in 2022, we had to limit CT service at our Trenton site due to our inability to provide staffing. After a brief disruption to service delivery, I’m happy to say we are now operating at full capacity.
An additional pressure has been the opening of the Ontario Breast Screening Program to 40-49 year-olds. Mammographers are in short supply across the province and many facilities are challenged to meet the additional patient demand.
Are you actively trying to recruit new staff?
Recruiting for health care positions is a problem nationwide, especially for niche roles like medical imaging. The demand is far exceeding the number of students coming out of schools.
Quinte Health’s Human Resources department, especially the recruiting team, have really embraced the challenge of the medical imaging professional shortage and have used creative approaches in their search for new talent.
There is cause for optimism, initiated by your own hospital.
For many years Quinte Health has been affiliated with an X-Ray program from Ottawa. We supported students from the program for their clinical placements during this time. Unfortunately, we have not been successful in retaining the students as employees once the placement is complete. The housing market has been a big contributor to this.
Quinte Health’s Senior Leadership team recognized the challenges we were having and reached out to the community college in our area, Loyalist College. We worked with them to help build a Medical Radiation Technologist program that would feed our workforce.
Together with our local Centre for Workforce Development we developed professional communication materials to market the program around the community and to local high schools. I’m pleased to say a new MRT program was launched at Loyalist last September with over 30 students accepted into the first cohort.
Quinte Health will provide clinical placement opportunities for students from the program. I’ve been told there are many local students in the program. It’s my hope that these students wish to remain local to the Quinte area and will want to work here upon completion of their program.
Why is this a significant development for Quinte?
With local students (both high school graduates and those looking for a second career) attending the Loyalist College Medical Radiation Technology program, this should provide a consistent stream of health care professionals to Quinte Health.
In the fall, CMEPP started piloting a new program with Quinte called the Equipment Coordination Service, or ECS. Quinte Health has been a CMEPP Participant for quite a while and we were delighted that your leadership team was receptive to piloting the program. How’s it going so far?
Amazing! This is a fantastic service that CMEPP has developed for its clients. They recognize the challenges of the current healthcare climate, and that organizations would prefer to have staff focus on patient care related activities, rather than non-value add tasks.
What were some of the challenges you were experiencing before and how has the program helped you and your department?
Prior to becoming a part of the CMEPP ECS pilot program, service calls for equipment had to be made by Diagnostic Imaging Technologists. This required them to connect with the equipment vendor directly, often resulting in much time being spent on the phone.
With a large fleet of equipment, the management of service events and follow-up can be quite tedious and time-consuming. Since the rollout of the ECS pilot, this is a much more streamlined process. Diagnostic Imaging staff are able to contact a CMEPP team member directly (either by phone or email). The CMEPP team member coordinates service and parts with the vendor in the background and then advises Quinte Health when we might expect a service engineer to arrive on site.
This has resulted in a lot of saved time for my staff, enabling them to focus on patient-care tasks.