The Garden City Telegram
NEW E-Edition!
Subscription
Required
Add Your Comment | Read (1) Comments
Heart Center at St. Catherine opens Monday
Published 7/3/2009 in Local News
By EMILY BEHLMANN
With its current resources, St. Catherine Hospital has been sending five to seven patients a week to Wichita's Kansas Heart Hospital because the patients' heart needs have exceeded what the Garden City hospital can provide.
1
Brad Nading/Telegram — Julie Vines talks about what can be done from in the control room Wednesday in St. Catherine Hospital's new heart center. The center, in conjunction with the Kansas Heart Hospital, is scheduled to open on Monday. Vines is a registered respiratory therapist at the hospital.
The trip is hard on the patients. According to St. Catherine President and CEO Scott Taylor, "when you have a heart attack, there is an adage in health care that time is muscle. As a person experiences a heart attack, they begin to lose heart muscle — it begins to die."
It's also hard on patients' families. Hospital spokeswoman Janie Wimmer, who drove to Wichita when her husband was being flown there for a heart attack, said, "you're not in a good mental or emotional state to be making that drive."
But starting Monday, the hospital will be able to reduce considerably the number of patients flown to Wichita by diagnosing and treating many heart conditions in Garden City at the new Heart Center at St. Catherine Hospital.
With the new center, which has been three years in the making, and new board-certified interventional cardiologist Dr. John Ferrell, St. Catherine will be able to offer services including cardiac catheterizations, angioplasty, stent placement, echocardiograms, pacemakers and treatment of various cardiac diseases.
According to Taylor, St. Catherine partnered with Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas, the group of physicians that owns and operates Kansas Heart Hospital, to open the center. Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas employs Ferrell, while St. Catherine is providing the facility, equipment and support staff.
Patient care
Julie Vines, registered respiratory therapist and director of the new center, said that until this point, there wasn't a lot the hospital could do locally for a patient who, for instance, was having a heart attack.
"If you're coming in with the signs and symptoms of a potential heart attack, you're going to get flown to Kansas Heart, because the first thing they're gonna want to do is to go in and look at that heart," she said. "The process that changes now is that once we're up and running with Dr. Ferrell, we'll be able to do those heart catheterizations here."
A heart catheterization involves bringing a patient to one of three bays in a receiving/recovery area, then, when the patient is ready, taking the person to the cath lab. In the lab, a catheter, or thin plastic line, is inserted that can inject dye into the patient's blood stream so the doctor can see what's going on inside the heart, Vines said.
If necessary, the doctor can then balloon the heart, insert a stent or do another procedure.
Meanwhile, a technician or nurse in an adjacent control room watches the patient's blood pressure, heart rhythm and other vital signs, providing feedback to the doctor, Vines said.
Besides emergency procedures, the heart center also will be used for outpatient consulting — part of the reason Vines said the facility is easily visible and accessible outside the hospital. The public entrance to the heart center sits on the west side of the hospital.
Outpatient services available at the clinic will include support for pacemakers and personal defibrillators, plus diagnosis and other procedures. Taylor said that for area primary care physicians who are worried that patients might have heart problems, it will be helpful to have a cardiologist nearby to provide consulting.
"We're not all experts in everything, so having a heart expert locally available to these physicians was clearly a request on the part of them," Taylor said.
Currently, limited heart consulting is provided by Dr. Michael Lloyd, a Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas doctor who operates a part-time clinic at St. Catherine, Wimmer said. However, St. Catherine has lacked the equipment for procedures like cathetertizations.
Lloyd will continue to provide heart services in Garden City, Wimmer said.
Taylor said St. Catherine still will have to send some of its most severe cases to the seven-physician staff at Kansas Heart Hospital — the Garden City hospital, for instance, isn't equipped to do open-heart surgery — but many southwest Kansans can be treated locally.
A new doctor
Ferrell, who attended medical school at Georgetown University, comes to Garden City after having worked for Rocky Mountain Cardiovascular Associates, Denver, since 1986.
He said he's looking forward to working in an area that, until now, has had limited access to heart care.
"It's an area that's relatively underserved," he said. "I felt my skills would be useful to the community."
Ferrell said he's spent the past few weeks moving back and forth between Garden City and Denver, along with visiting area towns to introduce himself to referring physicians.
He said he'll be available to respond to emergencies, but that ideally, he'll be able to catch heart problems before they result in heart attacks.
"The most satisfying thing is to diagnose things before they become an emergency," Ferrell said.
Improvements
Taylor said the opening of the Heart Center at St. Catherine comes after three years of meetings with local and Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas staff, fundraising, training for nurses and other technical staff, purchasing of equipment, construction of the lab and recruitment of Ferrell.
Ordinarily, creation of such a center probably would be about a $2 million venture, Taylor said, but because of the partnership with the Cardiovascular Consultants, along with the group's purchasing power, St. Catherine was able to reduce that cost.
The hospital raised the funds through several annual St. Catherine Hospital Development Foundation Galas, along with private donations, he said.
It's worth it, staff said, for a center that will serve patients from around southwest Kansas.
Taylor referred to a "golden window" of about an hour, in which if patients receive services, they have a much greater chance of survival. With the center in Garden City, even those in outlying towns will have a greater chance of receiving care in that time period.
"Not everybody makes it to Wichita," said Victor Hawkins, St. Catherine's executive director of marketing and development.
On the Web:
St. Catherine Hospital: www.stcath-hosp.org
Found 1 comment(s)!
Heart Surgery
Just 3 years ago at St. Catherine Hosp. I had open heart surgery. Done by a wonderful Dr. Geramundi and Dr. Hansen and the great staff that did a fantastic job.Don't sell the old staff of that hospital short for 'new beginnings' The great ones were and many are still there serving the ill and helpless. I worked there for 10 years myself and every day was spent serving the people of the area who opted out of the travel to the 'City' I salute all the nurses and Drs. who have served the area well for years.
Posted by: Dee Yakel on 7/4/2009