The St. Joseph's Hospital has been without ultrasound services since late spring of 2017 but there is good news on the horizon.

"We're in the final stages of discussion with a new radiology firm," explained Greg Hoffart, Executive Director at the St. Joseph's Hospital, "who's interested in moving to Estevan and we're quite optimistic that within a couple weeks, we'll be restoring ultrasound services to Estevan."

Services stopped late last spring when the previous technician moved away form the community. 

"Our challenge has been recruiting a qualified sonographer to move to Estevan to take up residency and to provide the service. It's like a lot of the technical trades in healthcare, there are not enough being trained. There are more jobs than there are people to fill these jobs. So it has been a challenge."

Hoffart noted that they did have potential candidate but they did not work out. 

"We had a recent graduate recruited, moved down to start the orientation and wasn't successful in making it through orientation. So that sent us back to the drawing board."

However, he feels optimistic about this opportunity. 

"The relationship that we struck up with the new radiology firm with a view to them moving their stenographers into Estevan is something that we have been really enthused about. And we are looking forward to resuming services real soon."