ecoline Supports Extending Imaging Services to Remote Patients

Siemens Healthcare|10/19/2015

With facilities located in urban centers, suburban townships, and rural areas around the Virginia peninsula, Riverside Health System serves a diverse range of communities. Seeking to extend the reach of its imaging services, Riverside leveraged the cost efficiencies of ecoline equipment to purchase four CT scanners: two SOMATOM Definition AS 64 eco systems and two SOMATOM Sensation 64 eco systems.


By placing this equipment in strategic locations around its network, Riverside made high-quality imaging much more convenient for many patients, a key service advantage in the southern Virginia region. The positive response from radiologists, technologists, and patients has led Riverside to pursue plans for purchasing additional ecoline equipment.

A Knowledgeable Patient Base
“This is a very informed, educated area,” says Riverside Imaging Services Manager Andrea Smith, RT(R)(M). “We’re relatively close to Norfolk Naval Base, the largest naval station in the world, and a significant percentage of our patients are retired executives, physicians, and high-ranking military officers. They definitely do their research, and it’s not unusual for us to have patients call and ask when our imaging units were installed, how many slices our scanners have, and what their dose will be.”

  

“It’s really a matter of quality,” adds Valentine Curran, MD, radiologist at Riverside Doctor’s Hospital. “Our patients want to know about our equipment and we feel very confident telling them they’re getting top-quality imaging with a significantly lower level of radiation exposure.” 

 

A Demand for Reliability
The region that Riverside serves also extends well into the rural areas of Virginia. Out at Riverside Walter Reed Hospital in Gloucester, Radiologist James Grimson, MD, notes the importance of uptime. “When you’re at a rural hospital, where you’re the only game in town, you can’t move the patient somewhere else for a procedure. So your system must be reliable. You have no choice.” For technologist Minu Samson, RT(R)(CT), reliability has always been a hallmark of Siemens equipment. “Dependability has never been an issue with our Siemens scanners,” she states. “In the year-and-a-half we’ve had the SOMATOM Definition AS 64 eco at Doctor’s Hospital, we’ve had no unscheduled downtime. It’s our workhorse.”

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