A state of the art computerised tomography (CT) scan was installed at the Lautoka Hospital last Thursday, resulting in quicker diagnosis of patients.
The equipment brought in from New Zealand means patients will be diagnosed in-house instead of being referred to Zens Medical Centre in Nadi.
Lautoka Hospital medical superintendent Dr Rigamoto Taito said patients would greatly benefit from the installation of the new machine.
“We were all very excited that from last Thursday, we no longer had to outsource CT services and we can now do them on site,” she said.
Aspen Medical Fiji CEO Annette Owttrim said the turnover rate of patients being scanned was much more efficient with the new CT scan machine.
“Prior to having the CT scan here, patients had to be taken to Nadi have the CT and then come back in an ambulance,” she said.
“So that meant staff had to go with the patient so that was a good hour or hour and a half of losing staff on site so it’s much more efficient to do it here.
“It also means in some cases you’ve only got a small time frame to identify if there’s something wrong with a patient and now we can work within that time frame.
“In future we are planning to have one of these in Ba as well so that can service the Ba and Rakiraki area and then this will be more for the Lautoka, Nadi and through to Sigatoka.”
