As the Affordable Care Act changes the way healthcare is delivered and reimbursed, a community hospital is growing and improving patient care, while remaining true to the core values that have made it a fixture of life in Lincoln, Nebraska, for 125 years and counting.
Combining High-Touch with High-Tech Benefits the Entire Community
CHI Health St. Elizabeth and its staff take great pride in patient satisfaction and their high-touch reputation, a quality that’s differentiable by their faith-based mission. These days, the hospital adds “high-tech” to its long list of admirable attributes, a new source of pride. One of its fastest growing high-tech specialties is interventional medicine, a much-needed treatment option for the more than 300,000 people in the hospital’s service area who stand to benefit from less-invasive procedures.
Mike Hopkins, director of Imaging Services and 20-year staff member, has been instrumental in helping CHI Health St. Elizabeth grow its clinical and technological capabilities. He understands the significance of minimally invasive procedures in treating patients to help achieve improved outcomes with less risk to the patient, faster recovery, and, many times, less cost. And in today’s financially burdened environment, cost is always a consideration.
CHI Health St. Elizabeth has two interventional labs. One is a general interventional lab containing the AXIOM Artis TA, a single-plane system from Siemens installed 12 years ago. Until recently, the other lab contained a biplane detector system with small detectors that were ideal for neuro imaging, but little else. When the hospital decided it was time to upgrade one of the rooms, the desire was to increase capabilities as much as possible, so it looked to replace the neuro system.
Budget, of course, was a factor in the purchase decision. Thanks to Siemens and Cassling, an authorized Siemens distributor, CHI Health St. Elizabeth got everything it wanted—new technology, new capabilities, new procedures to offer patients, and new workflows—all
without paying the cost for new—because the hospital chose the refurbished Artis zee® biplane eco from Siemens.
“Siemens rose to the top for three reasons,” said Hopkins. “One is that we have previous experience with Siemens. We have a room [with a system] that everyone loves. But what goes along with that is their reliability and the service and the relationship. But from the technology [perspective], Siemens won out as well. Siemens is head and shoulders above any other vendor in regard to the user interface and the ease of using the unit, being able to do things quickly, ergonomically, and intuitively. And then there’s always the cost issue. And that’s why we decided to go refurbished. We needed to find a cost-effective way to get everything we wanted.”
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