By Beth Allen
We have reached an end of an era. Dr. Threasa Frouge, MD, has served as Banner Imaging’s chief medical officer since our creation in April of 2019 and will retire this month. She was instrumental in our success long before that.
I have been privileged to work with her for most of my career and wanted to give her the opportunity to share her thoughts about where imaging has been and where we are going, in her words.
“I arrived in Phoenix in July 1988, after completing medical school at Duke University and Residency and Fellowship training at the Mallinckrodt Institute at Washington University.
Dr. Denise Smith and I arrived and joined Valley Radiologists the same month. We were the first women to join our group.
All of my training was immediately put to good use in covering a very busy radiology practice that served several hospitals, as well as a group-owned outpatient imaging practice.
When I joined in 1988, we were all fellowship trained; however, private practice and radiologist staffing, with no PACS or remote access to images, required that everyone be proficient in all aspects of radiology. After two years of fellowship training in abdominal imaging/interventional and nuclear medicine, I found the need to quickly study and brush up on other areas of radiology. I soon discovered that my career would be a lifetime of learning.
Radiology continues to progress and expand tremendously; this requires continuous learning in order to diagnose and treat our patients and support our clinical colleagues.
After becoming a partner in Valley Radiologists, I served as department chairman and medical director of various hospitals, most recently Banner Estrella. Working in a hospital environment taught me the value of service, teamwork, organization, efficiency and commitment to quality and safety. I felt very fortunate to serve at Banner Estrella, where I witnessed everyone working together to achieve these goals.
As I was doing this, I was also serving my group in a leadership role, that included oversight and development of our outpatient imaging practice that would eventually become a part of Banner Imaging.
It was exciting to learn the business aspect of successful, high-quality ambulatory imaging. As a physician-owned practice, we were responsible for maintaining a collegial and supportive culture for our imaging staff and radiologists, promoting quality, safety, and service, while being efficient and financially responsible. Financial success meant the ability to open new sites and purchase new equipment to better serve our growing community.
As Banner Health considered expansion into ambulatory imaging, the outpatient imaging practice that we (Valley Radiologists) had built and nurtured since the 1960s paired with the equivalent practice of our east side sister radiology group (EVDI/ARL) seemed a natural launching point for Banner.
Becoming Banner Imaging seemed a natural transition given our long history with Banner Health and the increasing complexity of managing and growing successfully into the future, where large well integrated structures will be needed to provide comprehensive care in multiple settings in all phases of life.
As Banner Imaging was getting off to a great start, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The value of being part of a large, proactive health system became immediately apparent. Banner Imaging received immense support to continue safely operating and serving the community throughout the pandemic. None of our offices closed. Banner Imaging staff continued to work in our offices or fulfill needs at other Banner facilities.
After having successfully navigated the pandemic and learned lessons of fortitude and resilience, Banner Imaging is poised to meet the challenges of future growth, both geographically and scope of service.
The best aspect of practicing radiology in both the acute care and ambulatory setting is working with the imaging team to provide direct patient care.
Radiology is a team sport. Everything we offer our patients and referring clinicians involves the entire team, from scheduling to front desk staff to technologist, medical assistant, imaging leadership and radiologist. We all have an important role to play in providing excellent and correct imaging, compassionate care and an accurate diagnosis and/or procedure.
Our patient is the focal spot of everything we do. We must always remember that any day at work may seem routine for us, but may be the day that one of our patients receives a cancer diagnosis or some other life changing news.
Many patients come to us under duress from illness and/or worry. I am always amazed at how our imaging staff is able to care for patients and defuse stressful situations. We do this by working together and supporting each other as we do the work of caring for others.
It has been rewarding to watch team members learn, problem solve, cross train, meet new challenges and advance to new positions in our organization. There are team leaders that I remember as RT students many years ago.
One of the greatest complements I received was a team member describing a problem that she was trying to solve … while saying to herself, ‘What would Dr. Frouge do?’
Solving problems, creating new and better processes and workflows, building new offices and service lines … these are all amazing activities that I have shared with our team over the years.
Looking back, there is not so much that I would have done differently, but certainly plenty of opportunity to learn and improve moving forward. Every shortcoming or misstep is really a chance to learn and try something different in the future.
For example, we realized that we always built offices “too small” at Valley. After 3 to 5 years, we were faced with investing more to expand assuming that we were not “land locked” by neighboring tenants. In future offices, we included “soft space” for future expansion. We started “building the future” into our imaging center floor plans.
Our challenges in the future may include doing more with fewer resources. The cost of caring for an aging population who will need more imaging may stress current resources.
We may need to recruit and train more imaging staff and expand days/hours of operation with our existing offices and equipment.
Service focused imaging leads to success. By serving patients, clinicians, and each other, we make the right choices. We place quality and safety first. We understand the clinical question, do the correct exam, provide accurate results in a timely manner, and contribute to the treatment and overall health and wellbeing of Sophia. We support each other as we do this work, creating a welcoming and collegial environment that will provide a positive experience for a patient. We train new workers to join our team. We interact positively with our health system and community in our endeavor to be ‘the easy button’ … ‘making health care easier, so life can be better!’ ”
We are proud to share this as evidence of success with a supportive leader. Frouge will move on to a well-earned retirement, but her Southern hospitality will continue to be evident in the way we welcome our patients. Our team is so fortunate to have had such an inspirational example.
Thanks for all you do!
