Staff Writer
CARIBOU — With the assistance of a crane, the next big thing at Cary Medical Center made its way through an opening through the roof for installation on March 3: the Philips Achieva XR, 1.5T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) unit. Though the installation of the equipment is expected to be completed by March 27, the unit should be fully operational on April 6.
Contributed photo
The new MRI was installed at Cary Medical Center on Feb. 3; the machine is so large that it needed to be brought into the building through the roof by a crane.
“With this new MRI, the quality of the study is going to be much higher,” explained Leslie Randolph, rehabilitation services and imaging services manager. “The images that will be produced with this piece of equipment are going to be phenomenal compared to the images from the previous unit. Also, the ambiance of the room is being upgraded to making patients feel at ease and comfortable,” she added. “We're trying to stay away from the clinical feel and provide a very homey, relaxed experience for our patients instead.”
With the new MRI, Cary Medical Center will be able to provide new services for customers.
“We will now be able to offer breast imaging studies, high-end muscular, skeletal, and vascular imaging,” said Dr. Shawn Laferrier, chief of radiology at Cary. “The instrument will also greatly enhance our neurological imaging capacity.”
Along with the increased array of studies offered at Cary Medical Center, the MRI also means convenience and saving of time and money for clients.
“It’s going to be much easier for patients who have mobility problems as well as general Aroostook residents because instead of traveling to Bangor or south of here, they can stay here in their own community and have the necessary studies that they need performed.”
“It's a benefit of convenience and expense,” said Shawn Anderson, chief operating officer at Cary Medical Center and administrator for imaging services, “you can forget the out-of-pocket expenses such as fuel, wear and tear on your vehicle, meals, lodging, and all of those things that went along with the necessity of diagnosis and treatment down south because those services are now available in Caribou.”
“With the addition of the new MRI combined with our recent purchase of a 64-slice CT scanner, we are now offering some of the most advanced imaging technology north of Bangor and in many ways equal to the technology available anywhere in the state of Maine,” said CEO and RN at Cary, Kris Doody. “We are so excited about the benefits this will bring to our patients.”
“We brought a detailed recommendation with the price tag of $1.6 million dollars to the board,” said Anderson. “They embraced it due to the fact that this would bring a level of technology to our patients and to our medical staff for their use in diagnosing and treating patients.”
“Yes, it's a large price tag,” he added, “but we have structured it in a way that makes it affordable. Community hospitals simply have to have the technology that we've invested in: a fully upgraded 64-slice CT scanner and now a state of the art MRI.”
With difficult economic times and the multiple pressures on hospitals across the state, Cary’s board of directors approached the purchase of the new MRI very deliberately. Peter Ashley, chairman of the board of directors at Cary said that in the end, it was just the right thing to do.
“Every member of our board recognized the precious resources that were required to make this purchase,” said Ashley. “The reality was that we had exhausted the capacity of our existing instrument and the time had come to replace it. We looked at multiple options, and trust the recommendations of our administration and medical staff,” he added.
While installation of the new unit is under way, Cary is currently utilizing another technologically increased item: a mobile MRI unit.
“When we went from our existing fixed unit to our mobile unit, we ensured that we took a technological upgrade. The current unit that we’re using is providing better image quality to our patients even in a mobile environment,” said Anderson. “When the Achieva instillation is completed, we'll take another leap forward from our mobile unit to our fixed base unit. The technological improvement of our mobile unit over our previous unit was a conscious effort; we didn't want to just stand still during the transition and frankly, our medical providers have been very impressed with the images that have been coming our of our mobile system; when they see the images coming out of our fixed unit, they will be dually impressed once again,” Anderson added.
More information on the MRI project can be found by visiting http://carymedicalcenter.org.
