Taranaki Base Hospital raises the radiology roof with new equipment

To install the MRI machine, the roof of Taranaki Base Hospital had to be taken off. Photo/ Supplied

Taranaki Base Hospital's radiology department now has a new state-of-the-art MRI machine.

Te Whatu Ora Taranaki project manager Heather MacKenzie says the delivery of getting the machine to its destination was a challenge.

"It wasn't just getting the very heavy, very big machine up to the second floor of the hospital. We had to upgrade the technical specification of the room the MRI was going into as well."

The MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner weighs in at 4 tons and is being leased until a new one is purchased for the New East Wing Building, due for completion in late 2024.

The old MRI machine was more than 20 years old and no longer serviceable. A new leased SPECT CT scanner (which uses radioactive tracers in the blood to take images and fuse them with CT rather than x-rays) is also due to arrive at the end of August, again as an interim solution until the New East Wing Building is completed.

To take the weight of the new machine, the floor had to be strengthened with steel and concrete, which needed the installation of new ceiling beams to protect the floors below. Some of these were craned in through a window above the emergency department, and cardiology was temporarily relocated while the work took place.

"The strengthening work was very disruptive, but the clinical teams involved were fantastic and just got on with their daily mahi treating patients amidst the bangs and thuds. Everyone involved with this major piece of work, which took six weeks, responded so well, it made the job so much easier to get done."

Heather says one of the big challenges was getting the machine to its new home.

"Ultimately, the only way to get a piece of equipment this big into a building is by taking down one of the walls or taking off the roof. In this case, the roof was the better option, so off it came and the MRI scanner was craned in, then the roof was replaced."

All in all, the project took six weeks of intense, challenging work not helped by the Taranaki weather.

"Yes, it was tough while it lasted, but everyone recognised the clinical benefit of having this brand new machine with all the capability they bring," says Dr Ryan Walklin, Te Whatu Ora Taranaki's head of radiology.

"So it was a matter of putting in alternative patient pathways and being flexible about workspaces and so on until the job was done. For the radiology team, maintaining a service throughout the disruption was the biggest challenge."

Ryan says having a long period of downtime at a hospital is a very unique situation.

"We were lucky to be able to call on the support of Absolute Radiology and Taranaki Radiology during this time. Any inpatients requiring a scan were transported from Taranaki Base Hospital to town so they could get the diagnostic treatment they needed."