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The Dr. Noble Irwin Regional Healthcare Foundation held their Annual General Meeting Thursday at the Pharmasave Gathering Room.

With the mission of gathering, administering, and dispersing funds to improve the quality and availability of healthcare for all southwest Saskatchewan residents, the Foundation was successful in meeting their goal following very successful fundraisers such as the 6th Annual Pharmasave "Your Family's Health Radiothon" and A Night Out in Greece.

Executive Director of the Dr. Noble Irwin Regional Healthcare Foundation, Clay Thompson, says they have purchased a $62,000 prenatal monitoring system for the Cypress Regional Hospital.

"I'm not near smart enough to explain what this equipment does or how it works, but I can tell you there are some 400 babies born at the Cypress Regional Hospital every year and it is my understanding that this equipment is used to monitor the mother and the new baby through child birth. So I might suggest, for quality purposes this purchase is pretty relevant to those 400 people in a fairly critical time," he said. "We have also put $34,000 to purchasing a new treadmill and stress monitoring machine for the hospital. When you consider that the Cardiac Care department does 695 stress tests, 4,433 ECG's, 421 pulmonary function tests, and 316 ambulatory pressure monitoring tests on average every year, ask yourselves, what would I do if that equipment wasn't available right here in Swift Current? We gathered and dispersed $5000 for the purchase of a new dishwasher for the regional hospital, but what if I told you that the nutritional services department prepares and serves in the neighborhood of 100,000 meals each year. Having clean and sanitized dishes all of a sudden becomes a little more relevant in providing quality care."

Thompson adds the Southwest Integrated Healthcare Facility in Maple Creek will be officially opening in the near future, with close to $1 million gathered to equip the facility.

"It is extremely well planned, it's going to be very well equipped, and it will make and keep quality healthcare available to the southwest corner of the health region for a very long time," he said. "We worked last year with the communities of Shaunavon and Ponteix in an effort to gather funds to purchase equipment for their facilities and for their labs specifically. In both cases the communities realized they wanted to keep basic lab testing services in their own areas and towns, and in order to do that they would need to make some financial contributions. Both projects have been completed, and both labs have been renewed."

"The point I'm trying to make here is really quite simple," he added. "We do in fact gather money, and we do in fact buy equipment, but our job is to work very closely with our partners at the Cypress Health Region to make sure that the facilities that provide healthcare services to 46,000 people that live in the region are able to provide quality healthcare, and having the right tools in place when needed is absolutely critical to be able to do that. We're not simply gathering money. We're working to improve the quality and availability of healthcare for all of us."

Additionally in 2014, $30,000 was delegated to 29 applicants to support our healthcare professionals in post secondary education through the Foundation's Skills Enrichment Scholarship program first established in 2001.

About 1200 businesses and individuals agreed to make contributions to the Dr. Noble Irwin Regional Healthcare Foundation last year.