Hospital Auxiliary presents $50,000 toward equipment for cancer care at PEC hospital

Presenting a $50,000 gift to the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation were Auxiliary volunteers (from left, at back): Art Hewer, vice-president of the auxiliary, Sue Law, foundation board member, Penny Rolinski, executive director of the Foundation, Bev Thompson, Festival committee member and Jack Starkey, chairperson for the Festival of Trees. From left at front, are: Fran Donaldson, vice-chair of the foundation and Cathy Starkey with the Festival of Trees committee. Briar Boyce photo

The Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Auxiliary continued the spirit of giving this month by topping up community support of their annual Festival of Trees, with additional funds added to proceeds from the 24th annual event.

Patrons supporting the festival helped raise $40,000 toward a priority piece of medical equipment for the hospital. Auxiliary members added an additional $10,000 to the cheque presented to the Foundation.

Briar Boyce, the foundation’s communications and donations co-ordinator, said the hospital foundation representatives were thrilled to receive the $50,000 toward the purchase of an Endo Works picture archive system for the County’s hospital.

PECMH is the low-risk endoscopy centre for Quinte Health Care. In order to continue to provide cancer screening services, PECMH is required by Cancer Care Ontario to install a $101,890 picture archive system.

The Endo Works picture archive captures, stores and shares images of specific regions of the body taken during screening procedures. Those images are used to verify diagnoses. The County’s hospital provides endoscopic screening services to more than 3,000 patients each year.

“The board and staff of the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation extend a heartfelt thank you to the people who donated, and bid on the beautifully decorated trees, purchased baked goods, draw tickets and items from the Second Time Around Shop Boutique at the 2017 Festival of Trees,” said Boyce. “The foundation sincerely appreciates the Auxiliary’s ongoing and ambitious efforts to raise funds for much needed medical equipment for the County’s hospital.”

Penny Rolinski, executive director of the Foundation, reports fundraising for this year’s Picture of Health Campaign is in the home stretch as the organization is close to meeting its $250,000 goal.

“The Picture of Health Campaign focuses on securing medical equipment for most of the departments at PECMH,” said Rolinski. “Efforts centre on replacing one colonoscope and two gastroscopes for the Endoscopy Department as well as fundraising for the picture archiving system. The emergency department requires a monitor upgrade to the telemetry (heart monitoring) unit and a defibrillator is needed for the inpatient unit.”

The foundation was charged with raising $319,000 this year, which included fundraising for the regional MRI upgrade.
Rolinski hopes to announce in the coming weeks the successful close of the campaign “thanks to a generous community for stepping up and supporting great care at Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital through gifts to the Picture of Health and Re-Imagine campaigns.”