By K. Richard Douglas
Twenty-two miles south of Asheville, North Carolina and nestled in the western North Carolina mountains, is the city of Hendersonville. The city is in Henderson County and sits just 15 miles north of the state’s border with South Carolina. The city was officially recognized as the county seat in January of 1847 and today includes many historic buildings, situated in seven historic districts.
In one of those districts, known as the Hyman Heights/Mount Royal Historic District, the city’s first hospital was built. Patton Memorial Hospital had 13 rooms, including one for surgery, and a staff of four physicians. Many of those physicians settled in the same area. The hospital opened its doors in 1913 and 40 years later, patients were moved to the city’s new hospital; Margaret R. Pardee Memorial Hospital.
Among the workers who call this beautiful location home, are the team of imaging service professionals within the biomedical engineering services department at Pardee Hospital. The department’s biomed and imaging services are provided through a third-party service provider; The Intermed Group.
The portion of the biomed department that makes up the imaging team at Pardee includes Director Matt Yates, CBET; Brian Russell, CRES; and Russell Hemingway.
Yates has 32 years of experience in biomed and imaging. Russell has 25 years of experience. Hemmingway has served in the HTM and imaging field for a decade.
Hemingway specializes in CT, MRI and ultrasound. Russell specializes in rad, R&F, ultrasound and mammography. Yates also specializes in rad, R&F, ultrasound and mammography.
The imaging service specialists are so integrated into the hospital, and so well-regarded by clinical staff, that the source of their paychecks is never considered.
“The hospital, however, doesn’t view us as a vendor. We are treated by everyone from administration, nursing, imaging techs, to the shipping and receiving department as a valued member of the health care provider team and a trusted advisor,” Yates says.
“Managed by UNC Health Care, Pardee Hospital is a not-for-profit community hospital founded in 1953. It is the first and only hospital in North Carolina to be accredited with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 9001:2008) for quality health care standards,” Yates says.
The hospital is licensed for 222 acute care beds and is the second largest employer in Henderson County. The hospital has several locations separate from the main campus, including a comprehensive physician practice network, five orthopaedic clinics and three urgent care locations. The health system’s Cancer Center provides a state-of-the-art healing environment for cancer patients along with an optimal work environment for health care professionals.
The team tries to cover as much of the imaging equipment as possible, but some service contracts are still used.
“The equipment we don’t cover is under a service agreement with the manufacturer and I monitor those contracts. We do have some shared service agreements on a few of the systems. We do ‘first call’ on most of the systems,” Yates says.
In addition to management duties, Yates is involved with the selection of equipment and is on the capital budget committee and capital projects committee along with assisting in preparation of equipment installation.
Russell and Yates are also involved with working with IT projects concerning the radiology equipment.
“Our company requires annual training to stay current with ISO standards. We normally use third-party and manufacturer when available. Training is considered part of the expectation of the hospital to stay up to date on the equipment we service,” Yates says.
Keeping an Eye on Software
The small imaging team has addressed other concerns beyond the routine calibrations, repairs and maintenance.
“[We are] currently working with IT and radiology evaluating status of equipment vulnerability and security of Windows OS and determining product life cycles. This has become a very important security measure in determining what equipment needs to be replaced. This is an ongoing project. What I am realizing is that it is sad that equipment that is only a few years old has to be replaced due to incapability of operating software to meet security standards,” Yates says.
He says that they also had an issue with the lock assembly consistently being damaged on a rad table that is out of support for parts.
“We had a part manufactured that was beyond manufacturer specs and the problem has gone away,” Yates says.
Despite these challenges, the team continues to keep the hospital’s imaging equipment operational and maintained.
Health care is better in Henderson, North Carolina, thanks to these three dedicated imaging service professionals.
