BIG SANDY, MT — The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has granted $500,000 to help Big Sandy Medical Center (BSMC) complete construction of a building to house its computer tomography (CT) scanner.
Construction on the facility began in spring 2025, and crews poured cement and erected the building’s walls by the fall. But as project costs nearly doubled, the hospital upped its fundraising efforts to offset rising costs.
Helmsley’s grant will ensure that CT scanning is offered locally, providing patients faster diagnoses, improved treatment plans, and shorter travel times, said Ron Wiens, CEO of BSMC.
“We are so grateful to the trustees of the Helmsley Charitable Trust for supporting our rural hospital by funding much-needed services to our community while improving the financial sustainability of our organization,” Wiens said.
CT scanners produce high-quality diagnostic images, allowing medical staff to accurately assess a patient’s health status and determine a proper course of treatment. Currently, BSMC clinicians are forced to transfer patients 80 miles to Great Falls or 35 miles to Havre for such testing.
The new facility will allow patients needing CT scans to remain near their families and support systems.
“The Helmsley Charitable Trust is committed to improving healthcare in rural communities, and offering high-tech testing closer to where people live is key to proving the best treatment,” said Helmsley Trustee Walter Panzirer. “It’s critical that every patient, regardless of their ZIP code, be given access to the care they deserve.”
The new scanner will also allow the hospital to schedule outpatient CT scans for providers in surrounding communities.
Other organizations contributing to the project include the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the Big Sandy Medical Service Foundation, Tordik Wildlife Foundation, Lippard-Clawiter Foundation, Big Sandy Medical Guild, the Dora Mahood estate, and other private donors.
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About Big Sandy Medical Center
Big Sandy Medical Center (BSMC) is a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital serving the rural agricultural community of Big Sandy in northcentral Montana. In 1965, with hospital floor plans provided by the Sears & Robuck Foundation and $125,000 of community-raised funds, a fearless group of volunteers built the first hospital building. Since then, as the healthcare needs of the community evolved so did the hospital’s response. In 1985, an addition was built to meet the needs of an aging population by providing long-term care beds. In 2023 a new modular clinic building was purchased and placed on donated property, increasing the clinic footprint from 1,500 sq. ft. to 5,000 sq. ft. Today, BSMC is expanding its outpatient services with state-of-the-art lab and radiology equipment, the newest being the current CT project.
About The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust aspires to improve lives by supporting exceptional efforts in the U.S. and around the world in health and select place-based initiatives. Since beginning active grantmaking in 2008, Helmsley has granted more than $4.5 billion for a wide range of charitable purposes. Helmsley’s Rural Healthcare Program funds innovative projects that use information technologies to connect rural patients to emergency medical care, bring the latest medical therapies to patients in remote areas, and provide state-of-the-art training for rural hospitals and EMS personnel. To date, this program has awarded more than $850 million to organizations and initiatives in the states of Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and two U.S. Pacific territories, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. For more information, visit http://www.helmsleytrust.org.