Aurora Health Care Opens New Hospital

On March 1, 2010, Aurora Health Care opened the Aurora Medical Center-Summit in Summit, Wisconsin. The hospital was opened for tours on Saturday, February 27, 2010. Approximately 8,000 citizens and dignitaries toured the facility. Emergency medical technicians — paramedic (EMT-P) crews from a multitude of the local fire departments were invited to tour the facility. Their tour originated in the emergency department. The heaviest toured areas were the cardiac cath labs and operating room areas. Cath lab representatives were Dan Mabie and Heidi Miller. These two cardiovascular professionals shared their knowledge and experience with several thousand men, women, and children. Many of the patients were cardiac patients who have had invasive and interventional procedures performed at other local facilities in the area and/or at other Aurora Health Care facilities in the nearby cities. Staffing of the facility has been troublesome. The system contracted four cardiovascular professionals to assist Mr. Mabie, including Ms. Miller, Ms. Lehto, Douglas Sanders, Julie Galbado, and Jennifer Soto, who are the six full-time cardiovascular professionals. Traci McMurray and Chuck Williams were contracted through staffing companies by the facility. The four supplemental cardiovascular healthcare professionals have vast experiences with “start-ups” of new cath labs. Tracie McMurray and Chuck Williams were contracted through staffing companies by the facility. The contracted team members arrived a week earlier to help Bryan Breeser, RN, BSN, MBA Director, Clinical Services, Eileen Quinlan, MHA, Manager, Cardiology Services and the two full-time cardiovascular professionals accomplish the tasks needed to successfully open the full-service cardiac system to the local communities of Oconomowoc and Summit, Wisconsin as well as the surrounding communities in Waukesha and Jefferson counties. The cardiovascular professionals have been joined by five cardiologists who are the initial cardiovascular medical specialists performing invasive diagnostic cardiac, percutaneous coronary interventions, and electrophysiology (EP) procedures. These physicians are Atula Bhatia Virinderjit Bamrah, Timothy Vellinga, Syed Zaidi, and Ramagopal J. Tumuluri. Additionally, the cardiovascular specialists and their cardiovascular specialist assistants are joined by Sandra R. Hansen, PA-C, Susan Joyce, CNS, Dr. Laith G. Alsayegh, a vascular medicine specialist; and Dr. Dennis Zagrodnik II, who practices general surgery and vascular surgery. The two cath labs and one EP suite are equipped with General Electric (GE) Medical Systems Innova imaging systems and GE Mac-Lab patient monitoring systems. In addition, both cath lab systems have been integrated with Volcano intravascular ultrasound units. On Monday, March 1, 2010, the hospital was formally opened to the community. Clinical specialists from Abbott, GE Healthcare, and Volcano were on-site to ensure a smooth launching of the state-of-the-art instrumentation. Clinical education specialists and field service engineers remained on-site for the first week. A GE Healthcare field service engineer trained two of the technical-based cardiovascular professional team members to perform daily and weekly quality assurance programs on the GE Innova imaging systems so the radiation dosage levels remain within FDA and state regulatory guidelines. This healthcare facility is one of very few cardiac cath lab systems in the United States that has developed stringent policies and procedures to assure that patients are well protected from over-exposure from ionizing radiation during EP, invasive cardiology, and interventional cardiology procedures. The process requires the use of an aluminum phantom and a composite phantom that contains various image resolution, line-pair and densitometry embedded devices. The daily and weekly tests require less than fifteen minutes to complete. Learn more at www.aurora.org

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