BHS unveils new facility
SUMMIT TWP — Butler Health System officials officially opened a new three-story medical office building Thursday with a ceremony that doctors and hospital administrators said concluded a project driven by community investment and need.
“This is about a space to take care of patients,” said Ken DeFurio, the president and CEO of Butler Health System, who called the company's decision to build the $20 million facility a serious advancement for its women's care and palliative care departments.
“This is really becoming as good as it gets anywhere in the country,” DeFurio said.
That's due in part to the addition of a small but revolutionary piece of equipment, said Dr. Ruthane Reginella, the hospital system's director of women's imaging — a three-dimensional tomosynthesis machine that takes more precise images for mammography patients.
Hospital officials are waiting on federal approval to begin training on the $600,000 machine, and they expect to make it available to patients before the end of the year.
Reginella said the equipment, which is the only tomosynthesis machine in Butler County, has meant big jumps in cancer diagnoses elsewhere in the country. That may sound like a bad thing at first, she said, but it's actually good. It means the technology is helping doctors to identify and to treat more breast cancer than ever before.
“I fully expect we will have about a 30 percent increase in cancer detections,” Reginella said of how the machine will impact the department's work.
The new building also provides more space for the department, which is something both DeFurio and Reginella said was essential.
“Our space is a huge advancement because it is so much larger than what we had (before),” Reginella said. “It's functional and lovely.”
Each of the building's three floors features artwork from painters, sculptors and photographers depicting communities in the county. That's a conscious choice Cheryl Ramsey, BHS hospitality service manager, said was made to try and aid patient comfort and peace of mind.
'We wanted art depicting the communities that we work in,” Ramsey said.
DeFurio called the focus on patient comfort a hallmark of the health system's vision for the 48,000-square-foot building.
“This is a place of comfort and healing; a place where we can reduce patients' anxiety,” he said.To that end the hospital also is adding a new department, palliative care, to its services at the medical building.The department, which is about two months old, is run by Dr. Kathy Selvaggi and staffed by a physician's assistant and a social worker.Selvaggi said the goal is to staff the new department to levels that will allow it to open an outpatient clinic. She sees enough need in the community to make that necessary. It has provided consultations for about 100 people so far, Selvaggi said.“I think the need is huge. It's significant throughout the country as a whole,” she said, adding that palliative care is often incorrectly connected with end-of-life care.While that can be part of the department's mission, Selvaggi said, the overarching goal has nothing to do with death. Rather, it's focus is the quality of a patient's life.“The goal is, let's see what we can do to improve the quality of (a patient's) life,” she said. “It really is fermenting this team approach to the care of the patient, which translates into better care for that patient. That's what we're trying to build.”The new facility at 129 Oneida Valley Road houses a laboratory, X-ray department, preadmission testing, BHS Surgical Associates, the Women's Imaging Center, BHS Women's Care Associates, and cancer care.The system's cardiology services will remain at the current hospital building at 127 Oneida Valley Road.The campus, which has been renamed BHS Crossroads Campus, is within a mile of Butler Memorial Hospital and has created new traffic patterns that hospital officials want visitors to observe when entering the campus.
