Have a Heart and Go Red for Women
January 26, 2018
Cody Rogers is January Employee of the Month
February 2, 2018
The new Stryker Prime X x-ray stretcher is not an ordinary patient bed in the emergency department at Texas County Memorial Hospital.
“The new patient stretcher is providing more comfort to patients when they need it most,” Jerri Sue Crump, TCMH emergency department director, explained. According to Crump, about 12,000 area residents visit the emergency department at TCMH each year and nearly half of them require some type of diagnostic radiological test.
Diagnostic radiological tests are any imaging exams and procedures used to diagnose a patient. The tests are frequently needed for the physician to properly diagnose a disease or injury in a patient.
The new stretcher is a “first” for the emergency department at TCMH. Using the stretcher, the emergency department now has 360 degrees of access to position the x-ray cassettes without jostling or maneuvering the patients.
Prior to the addition of the new stretcher, the emergency department team would have to lift and reposition their patients for each image that needed to be taken.
“The stretcher will enable us to get critical x-ray images of a patient without having to reposition them and place a hard x-ray cassette under them,” Crump said.
Crump described the x-ray stretcher as a way to provide faster, more efficient patient care while keeping patients as comfortable as possible. “The new x-ray stretcher helps us meet our goal of providing better patient care in a more comfortable way,” Crump said.
TCMH was able to obtain the new x-ray stretcher through a $6,000 grant from the Bess Spiva Timmons Foundation and additional funding support of $1,386 from the TCMH Healthcare Foundation.
“The Timmons Foundation in partnership with the TCMH Foundation has been very generous to help us obtain equipment that we may not have ever been able to purchase otherwise,” Wes Murray, TCMH chief executive officer, said.
Murray noted the x-ray stretcher was immediately put to use in the emergency department. “Many patients will benefit from this donation,” Murray said.
“The Healthcare Foundation was pleased to partner with the Timmons Foundation to provide another tool for our staff to use to improve the patient healthcare and outcomes at TCMH,” Jay Gentry, TCMH Healthcare Foundation director, said.
The Timmons Foundation is a private family foundation of the descendants of Bess Spiva Timmons. The late Dr. Joe L. Spears, a long-time family practice physician from the Cabool area, is a past president of the Timmons Foundation Board. Tim Spears, son of Dr. Joe L. Spears, assisted in obtaining the funding for TCMH through his family’s foundation.
The TCMH Healthcare Foundation is the non-profit organizational arm of the hospital with a mission to ensure the quality of healthcare services for children, women and men at TCMH.