New MRI coming to hospital
Pomerado Hospital officials are moving forward on an aggressive plan to boost the range of services available to local residents by welcoming new MRI technology to the Poway campus.
Pomerado Imaging, in a joint venture with Valley Radiology Consultants, is set to unveil a new $1.7 million high-field 1.5 Tesla MRI system next month that will offer cardiac uses never before available in North County. The new state-of-the-art system will be installed in a specially designed trailer next door to Pomerado’s emergency entrance on the south side of the hospital’s campus.
“This new MRI system strengthens our commitment to providing the most advanced patient care with cost-effective technology,” said Dr. Allen Nalbandian, medical director of Pomerado Imaging and a member of Valley Radiology Consultants. “This new technology ensures that Pomerado Imaging will stay on the forefront of medical imaging for years to come.”
In addition to routine procedures like brain and spine imaging, the new system will allow doctors to perform advanced applications, including brain scans for early stroke detection, heart anatomy and function studies, breast MRI, evaluation of different cancers, and non-invasive angiography from head to toe.
“Because many of the applications cross many different specialties, there has been a very productive, cooperative dialogue between the radiologists, cardiologists and vascular surgeons to plan the best uses for the new MRI,” said Jim
Flinn, Pomerado’s chief administrative officer.
The cost for the new system is being shared by Palomar Pomerado Health, the district that operates Pomerado and Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, and Valley Radiology Consultants, a contracted group that offers radiology services to all district patients.
The addition is not associated with Proposition BB improvement dollars, which stem from a 30-year general obligation bond measure approved by voters last November. Prop. BB, which will fund major renovations and additions throughout the district, will however be part of a major expansion project at Pomerado in the near future that will double the size of the local hospital from a little more than 100 beds to more than 200. A new outpatient pavilion, increased women’s services and multi-level parking structure are also slated for Pomerado are part of Prop. BB improvements.
The driving force in making so many improvements to Pomerado is a desire to increase usage of the hospital by area residents, both in Poway and surrounding areas, Flinn said.
Past focus groups show that the public generally thinks favorably about Pomerado, but two issues bother some people — locations and range of services.
“In the past that’s probably a fair criticism, but now that’s not the case,” Flinn said.
In the near future, hyperbaric oxygen chambers will be added to the campus for wound care. Flinn said that service should be available in mid-April and will be located in the same area as the new MRI trailer. A new CAT scan is also slated to be installed inside the hospital later this year.
“We’re trying to take away the image that Pomerado does not have a full range of services,” Flinn said, noting survey reports have shown that only 9 percent of Rancho Penasquitos residents use Pomerado in an emergency, even though the hospital is much closer than other facilities in the county.
“In Rancho Penasquitos we do not have the type of volume that we would expect,” Flinn said, noting that the district is prepared to launch a massive campaign to let residents outside of Poway know that Pomerado is just as capable of handling emergencies as the more well-known Palomar Medical Center in Escondido and other facilities in the county.
Pomerado’s emergency department, which has an average wait time of about 21 minutes, is the highest scoring department in the hospital, a rarity for most hospitals to achieve, Flinn said.