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Facilities Overview and History

History

The Western Australian PET/ Cyclotron service was established in November 2002 and performed its first scan on 27 November 2002. It is a State facility that endeavours to offer a service to all patients in WA and provide equitable access of the technology to all stakeholders.

All metropolitan teaching hospitals have been involved in the planning and establishment of the service. Data networks have been utilised and expanded to ensure delivery of PET patient images to the main public hospitals in Perth. A stakeholder committee that includes representatives from all teaching hospitals, universities and industry provides policy and direction of the service. It is a unique service that has PET accredited Medical specialists that represent the main Perth hospitals reporting patient studies. This allows for sub specialisation within the service, for example qualified paediatricians with nuclear medicine and PET training reporting on paediatric PET studies. The service also provides education and training to other health professionals.

The facilities infrastructure was funded from $3.85 million given by the Commonwealth as part of a Federal tendering process for PET and $5 million dollars from WA State Health budget. The cyclotron bunker was already in place at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital due to planning for a potential facility such as this at the time the new hospital was constructed in 1980.

Although imaging patients commenced in November 2002, the service was reliant on isotope from Melbourne to perform a maximum of eight patients a day for its first 9 months of operation. In early August 2003 the cyclotron, radiopharmaceutical laboratories and integrated PET service was officially opened by the State Health Minister Mr. Jim McGinty and his Federal counterpart Senator Kay Patterson. (click for pictures).

The cyclotron is fully operational and we are now routinely performing 12-15 scans per day with FDG manufactured in the on-site radiopharmaceutical laboratories. We have the capacity to perform up to 3000 patient studies per year with our current PET camera. Our opening hours are from 7a.m. to 7p.m. Monday to Friday with the option to work Saturday if there is increased demand or an unacceptable increase in waiting time.

Currently the service is the only facility in WA to have Medicare funding. Patient appointments are prioritized on a clinical basis and we have a mechanism to accommodate urgent cases within a few days. No patient who is an Australian resident is billed for clinically required PET studies. Recurrent funding for the facility is based on Medicare revenue and some yearly funding from the WA Health budget.