Hospital expands to nuclear medicine

By Dominika Maslikowski

News West

FORT MOJAVE - Valley View Medical Center announced its first major service expansion since its opening and introduced a new CEO on Nov. 15 during ceremonies marking the hospital's first anniversary.

The nuclear medicine program is expected to handle its first patient in early December, officials said, and will examine about four patients a day.

Nuclear medicine is used to show the function of body organs - like the heart, liver or lungs - by injecting the patient with a trace of radioactive material. The material is picked up by a special camera that creates a computer-generated image of the organ's inner workings. Once the procedure is done, the kidneys cleanse the blood and the isotope is excreted.

Radiologist William Kelley said the Millennium GE machine - worth about $350,000 - can produce a 3-D image or allow him to examine an organ by slices. It can also show images of a patient's beating heart, and how it pumps and ejects blood, to help pinpoint abnormalities.

The injected chemical can also attach itself to white blood cells, which can be tracked when they travel and concentrate in an infected area. Doctors can find the infection, Kelley said, by looking where the cells congregate.

“Dozens of new types of examinations will be performed at Valley View,” said CEO James Matney, who joined the medical center on Nov. 1 from Phoenix Baptist Church.

As the hospital's new CEO, he traced the hospital's progress and accomplishments from a ribbon cutting one year ago to considering themselves “number one in the area.” He said the hospital will continue to grow “upwards and outwards” with the community's support and thanked his “top-notch personnel for setting the standard of care for this area.”

Matney hinted at several more expansions before announcing the new nuclear medicine program. He also reminisced about the hospital's successes, and about patients who have overcome big odds or shown devotion to the hospital.

Matney also announced that during its first year of operations Valley View had more than 25,000 patients, including admitted patients, outpatients and emergency room visits. That list includes 12,224 emergency room patients, 5,985 MRIs and CT-scans, 3,579 traditional hospital room patients, 1,851 outpatient surgeries, 999 inpatient surgeries and 456 babies, with two sets of twins.

Valley View Medical Center is a 60-bed hospital owned by LifePoint Hospitals, Inc., which also operates hospitals in Needles and Lake Havasu City.