Mobile MRI trailer makes first stop at Three Rivers

By: 
Nathan Oster

Three Rivers Health’s new partnership with Monida Shared Imaging began to bear fruit last Thursday with the arrival of a mobile MRI trailer that be making scheduled stops at health care facilities across northern Wyoming and eastern Montana.

Director of Clinical and Ancillary Services Kelsey Sullivan said the trailer will stop at TRH every other Thursday for now. If the demand exists, it could make a stop at TRH every Thursday, she said.

“With the winter months coming up, it will be a great option for our community to avoid needing to drive long distances to get one done,” said Sullivan.

In a recent press release, Three Rivers Health officials said the partnership with Monida would allow facilities to share the cost of expensive technology to help keep the total cost of care down and allow these rural hospitals to afford state-of-the-art technology equivalent to equipment available at larger tertiary hospitals.

The release continues, “The SIGNA Voyager is a wide-bore (70cm) MR system, which allows patients more room in the scanner and provides a patient-friendly design that maximizes comfort and versatility. AIR coils wrap patients like a blanket during the scan. This scanner also offers better image quality and reduced scan times due to AIR Recon DL, GE HealthCare’s deep learning image reconstruction technology. The system can accommodate patients of all shapes and sizes, employs shorter exam times for patients due to improved productivity and
faster set-up times, and offers a feet-first option that will dramatically reduce the risk of claustrophobia.”

Unlike CT scanners, which many rural hospitals own and use for emergencies such as trauma patients, most MRI scans are non-emergent and can be scheduled when the mobile scanner makes its weekly or bi-weekly rounds. 

Capable of acquiring diagnostic information significantly faster than older MRI systems, the scanner will enable physicians to improve the diagnosis of a wide range of conditions, including vascular disease; stroke; abdominal disorders, brain disorders; and musculoskeletal conditions in the knee, shoulder and other joints. 

 

Other Hospital News

In other news from the Oct. 16 meeting of the TRH board:

• The hospital district showed a net operating loss of $135,000 for September as TRH reported slight decreases in patient registrations/encounters (1,221, compared to 1,301 in August) and gross patient revenue ($1.43 million, compared to $1.57 million in August).

But officials remain encouraged by the overall trends of the first quarter of the fiscal year. For that three-month period, patient registrations/encounters were up 12.5%.  The district ended September with the equivalent of 75 days of cash on hand and with a service district account balance of $640,349.  That is the tax revenue from the county; it has only grown this year, as the district has not had to dip into its service account to fund operations like it did in past years.   

The hospital district paid slightly more for contract labor in September, $7,872 compared to $5,514 in September.  But it’s still a far cry from September 2023, when the payout to contract laborers topped $140,000.

• Sullivan reported an excellent turnout for the recent Pinktober 5K run/walk in Basin, that some recent hirings had brought the clinic back up to full staff and that pharmacists Ross Davidson and Camilla Hancock had transitioned from contract employees to staff members.

• In a letter, TRH recently announced that Mary Freund, a family nurse practitioner, would be leaving the practice effective Dec. 10, 2024.

• Dr. Christopher Robertson, the chief of staff at TRH, said, “There’s a little COVID going   around and we’re also seeing some upper respiratory viruses like rhinovirus ... we’re not seeing huge numbers, though.”

• CEO Joel Jackson said he’s inviting community members to a meeting at 3 p.m. Nov. 20 as part of his ongoing effort to establish a foundation for Three Rivers Health.

• TRH plans to host a haunted house in the part of the facility formerly known as the Bonnie Bluejacket Memorial Nursing Home.  The setup for it has been ongoing over the past several weekends.

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