The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announces a statewide grant for Minnesota

Having the proper equipment to provide life-saving diagnostic is very important.

“This initiative is a monumental step forward in creating a well-educated workforce that can fully embrace scenography as a necessary and important diagnostic tool for rural and underserved communities,” Interim Dean of Business, IT and Education at St. Cloud Tech and Community College Jennifer Erickson shares.

Providing funds to nearly 100 hospitals and clinics across Minnesota, The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust have committed to a $26.4 million grant providing life-saving diagnostic equipment.

“Nearly $18.3 million of this grant will fund the latest and greatest ultrasound equipment across Minnesota. It will purchase about 200 point-of-care ultrasound devices, which will allow physicians to see what’s going on in the inside of a patient’s body in real-time,” Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Trustee Walter Panzirer mention.

For hospitals like Essentia-Virginia, President of Radiology Julie Singewald shares that this really makes a difference in overall patient care. “Having technology where we can do that cardiac scanning, where we can do an abdominal scan with really high-quality imaging, it gives answers to our clinicians at the bedside regardless of the location that they’re being performed.”

Singewald also adds that this type of equipment isn’t always available in parts of Greater Minnesota where healthcare access is limited.

“When we have more of our rural locations, which were the recipients of the funds, it’s really an opportunity to ensure that we’re providing top-notch technology at these locations that don’t necessarily see they see a high volume of patients, but not like some of our places, say Fargo and Duluth. So it’s really a great opportunity that they are allowing us to just make sure that we’ve got that technology access to areas that probably have fewer patients than we do in other places.”

Just like Essentia, hospitals and clinics in two harbors, Grand Rapids, Virginia, McGregor, Ely, Grand Marias, Aitkin, and Crosby are also recipients of some of these funds.