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Cardiac care in Regina is going to be getting a bit of an upgrade thanks to a new partnership between the Hospitals of Regina Foundation and Municipal Hail Insurance.
Municipal Hail Insurance has pledged a $1-million matching gift for donations from the community in support of the hospital foundation’s $2.5-million Cardiac Care Campaign. Dino Sophocleous, the president and CEO of the Hospitals of Regina Foundation, said the money will go a long way.
“This is an exceptional commitment,” he said Tuesday. “A million dollars is quite a bit of money, and a matching million-dollar gift is very significant to this foundation.
“Our community responds to matching gifts quite significantly and quite nicely, so this is an exceptional commitment by Municipal Hail to our collective health, and it means that every donation from this community for this program (and) for this project will have to have an impact.”
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Rodney Schoettler, the chief executive officer for Municipal Hail Insurance, said heart disease is a significant issue for farmers.
“In 2019, a U.S. study tracked the cause of death for farmers between 1994 and 2019, and when that was released, it showed that 70 per cent of farmer deaths were related to heart disease,” he said.
“Researchers theorized that this may be connected, of course, to the high number of hours worked, a lot of stress in that profession, the lifestyle, and just the physical exertion.
“The connection between heart disease and farming is one of the reasons why Municipal Hail was so interested in partnering with the Hospitals of Regina Foundation. We are extremely proud to celebrate our new partnership and the creation of the Saskatchewan Municipal Hail Insurance Cardiac Care Fund.”
The combined effort is using that money to upgrade the technology in Regina General Hospital’s second catheterization lab.
Cardiologists use catheterization labs to help diagnose and treat a variety of different heart conditions. The city’s first cath lab was upgraded in 2020, also with help from the Hospitals of Regina Foundation.
Dr. Andrea Lavoie, the lead of cardiology in Regina, said that more and more people are in need of this service.
“We’ve certainly seen an increase in cardiovascular events and disease across North America in the last little while, so we’ve seen an increased demand for our services,” Lavoie said.
She said the new technology will go a long way toward improving efficiency and safety.
“The upgrade will allow us to do it more safely, so there is much less radiation that comes from the newer machines, which protects both our patients and our staff,” Lavoie said.
Last year, Regina alone saw almost 2,500 completed procedures. The teams in Regina also saw up to 88 transcatheter aortic valve implantation procedures, which is an increase of 300 per cent from when they initially introduced the procedure in 2016.
As for when this new technology will be implemented and fully functional, the expected completion date is late 2024.