Neonatal transport incubator delivered

FORT FRANCES—Moving newborns who require specialized care just got much easier for Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc. with the addition of a new neonatal transport incubator.
The Voyager transport incubator was delivered to La Verendrye Hospital here last week, arriving with Phil Fish of Airborne Life Support Systems, a division of International Biomedical, who came here from Texas to train local doctors, nurses, and paramedics on its use.
Fish explained the incubator is used to keep babies safe and warm, while also monitoring their vital signs (heart rate, temperature, etc.) and providing high-frequency ventilation, as they’re being transported via aircraft to other locations for treatment during medical emergencies.
“It’s meant to be a complete mobile life support,” he noted.
The incubator unit sits atop a stretcher, which can be quickly moved from a health care centre to a waiting helicopter or airplane for rapid transport elsewhere when needed.
Barring any emergencies, hospital staff likely will use the transport incubator for non-emergency uses (like to move a newborn from the operating room to the maternity ward after a C-section) in the near future in order to familiarize themselves with it.
While La Verendrye did have a transport incubator, the new one will be able to provide much better emergency medical service, noted Teresa Hazel, director of the Riverside Foundation for Health Care.
Previously, for instance, a doctor actually would have to operate the infant’s ventilator by hand for the duration of its trip from facility to facility.
The high-frequency ventilation is automatic.
“We definitely didn’t have a state-of-the-art piece like this,” stressed Hazel. “We had a transport incubator, but it was very old. It wouldn’t have had all the bells and whistles they’re talking about now.”
She noted when the need to transport newborns who need specialized care happens, “you want that ability to transport them safely and effectively.”
Foundation chair Larry Cousineau said the state-of-the-art incubator is a perfect match for the “excellent air ambulance service” here, and therefore an enhancement to the quality of care available to newborns who “are so vulnerable.”
He added premature babies have to be transported more than people realize, and “it was a priority for us to get a new unit in place.”
The new transport incubator costs about $70,000—$50,000 of which was covered by the Riverside Foundation for Health Care.
This money were raised through the Foundation’s annual Christmas appeal, the Shoppers Drug Mart “Tree of Life” campaign, and in memoriam donations.
Cousineau added the transport incubator is a good example of how the Foundation can contribute to district health care projects “to make them happen sooner than later.”
“A lot of times, the funds just aren’t there in the hospital budget to allow these things to happen as soon as we’d like,” he noted. “We try to make them happen sooner, you might say.”
Meanwhile, with Rainycrest now under the aegis of Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc., Cousineau said the Foundation is looking forward to helping fund more purchases for that facility.
“We definitely see a need over there for different things for residents of Rainycrest, too,” he remarked. “A lot of people are really on board with that because the seniors that are in Rainycrest really deserve a lot of respect.”
(Fort Frances Times)