RRMC leading way for small hospitals
Cooperation with GE has given hospital technology edge
|
|
Sarah Christie, Paul Waite and Keith Brostek work with the nuclear medicine scanner at Rutland Regional Medical Center. Vyto Starinskas / Rutland Herald |
Toolbox
By Brent Curtis STAFF WRITER - Published: November 18, 2009
Rutland Regional Medical Center is making a national name for itself as a community hospital with high-tech care and capabilities.
In cooperation with GE Healthcare, which has worked closely with the hospital for years to upgrade its diagnostic imaging equipment, the hospital is serving as a showcase of how smaller hospitals can afford and use technology on a scale usually seen only in much larger medical facilities.
GE officials say Rutland's hospital will serve as a "blueprint for institutions that use technology." The radiology department and its 30 related specialized services including trauma, breast care, orthopedic and cancer center services are being put on display to visiting hospital officials who represent community sized hospitals coast to coast.
"We were trying to find someone doing something incredibly special," said Susan Potter, marketing manager for GE Healthcare in Milwaukee.
What makes the technology in Rutland special isn't that it's unique — large training hospitals such as Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., have similar or more advanced diagnostic equipment.
But finding the assembled systems available in Rutland at other hospitals of similar size is rare if not unheard of, Potter said.
Housed in the hospital's radiology department are diagnostic machines with names like MRI, CT, ultrasounds, advanced fluoroscopy, mammography, C-arms, nuclear medicine and portable units. Much of that equipment can be found at other rural and community hospitals.
But thanks in part to a close relationship with GE Healthcare, which has provided advanced training, technical support and upgrades and in part do to the hospital's innovated and integrated approach to diagnostic imaging and patient care, Rutland has molded itself into a model for thousands of other GE Healthcare customers, Potter said.
"They're showing that you don't need to go to Boston or New York for advanced imaging. You can do it in your own community and that's very important," she said.
But to do what's being done in Rutland takes training and teamwork that RRMC vice president of clinical services Barbara Robinson said has been the hospital's focus for the better part of two decades.
"We really started sooner than other hospitals of a similar size," Robinson said. "In 1988 we acquired our first CT scanner and we've been adding to our technology ever since."
Robinson and MRI services director Dr. J.C. Biebuyck said part of what makes Rutland's diagnostic department different from others is the advanced way the hospital uses its equipment.
RRMC was the first hospital in Vermont — and Robinson and Biebuyck believe perhaps the first medical center in New England — to use a magnetic resonance unit for advanced breast imaging for early cancer detection.
The step was more than a feather in Rutland's cap — patients from around the state and well beyond Vermont's borders came to Rutland for diagnostic services in the years before other hospitals caught up.
"While a lot of other places have the technology we have they're not using it the way we are," Biebuyck said. "I think that's what captured GE's imagination."
For GE, the hospital's technical prowess represents an opportunity to show off the potential of high-tech equipment.
For patients at the hospital, the technology and the know-how represent a pain free and fast alternative to more invasive procedures.
The diagnostic imaging at the hospital allows doctors to take closer looks at every organ and system in the human body with clarity that would usually require a scalpel, Robinson and Biebuyck said.
An example, the pair said, is analyzing arteries in the legs for blockages and other problems. In the past, patients had to endure catheters inserted at the groin during a procedure that required a one- to two-day absence from work.
"Now we use the CAT scan and 30 seconds later we have all the info we need," Biebuyck said. "And it's not just the arteries in the legs. We can look into the arms, search for clots in the lungs, cardio-imaging and we can look in the neck too. We can do all of it non-invasively."
brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com
35