Photo courtesy Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge
He was due on December 28, and Dylan Cohen Williams was supposed to be one of the last babies of 2014.
But after making Mom and Dad wait a few days longer, on January 1, 2015, at 12:53 p.m. he became Methodist Medical Center’s first baby of the New Year.
Dylan weighed in at 8 pounds, 2 ounces, and he was 20 inches long. [Read more…]
The main entrance to Methodist Medical Center, a Covenant Health hospital in Oak Ridge, is pictured above at night. (Photo courtesy Covenant Health)
Covenant Health’s cardiac program has received the highest quality designation from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, an organization dedicated to ensuring the best possible outcomes for surgeries of the heart, lung, and esophagus, a press release said. The society represents nearly 7,000 surgeons, researchers, and allied health care professionals worldwide.
Based on data submitted from Covenant Health’s elite heart hospitals—Parkwest, Fort Sanders Regional, and Methodist medical centers—Covenant’s cardiac program received a three-star quality ranking in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database, regarded as the world’s premier clinical registry for adult cardiac surgery, the press release said. About 95 percent of U.S. programs that perform adult cardiac surgery participate in the database, but only about 10-15 percent of participants receive the three-star designation.
The cardiac team was recognized for quality outcomes for coronary artery bypass graft, or CABG, a surgical procedure to create new paths around narrowed and blocked arteries to allow blood flow to the heart. The quality designations are based on data measures for U.S. hospitals in several areas related to CABG surgery, including survival and complication rates, use of surgical techniques shown to deliver better outcomes, and appropriate use of perioperative medications. Covenant’s cardiac surgery team performed above national averages in overall composite scores for the study. [Read more…]
Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge has received the Mission: Lifeline Bronze Receiving Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association for the treatment of patients who suffer severe heart attacks.
“Methodist is honored to receive recognition from this highly respected organization,†said Dr. Milan Sheth, a board-certified and fellowship-trained interventional cardiologist on the staff of Methodist Medical Center. “We are deeply committed to preventing conditions that can lead to heart attacks and to diagnose and treat even the most critically ill cardiac patients.â€
Each year in the United States, approximately 300,000 people have a STEMI, or ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, caused by a complete blockage of blood flow to the heart that requires timely treatment. To prevent death, it’s critical to immediately restore blood flow, either by surgically opening the blocked vessel or by giving clot-busting medication.
The American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline program helps hospitals, emergency medical services, and communities improve response times so people who suffer from a STEMI get prompt, appropriate treatment. The program’s goal is to streamline systems of care to quickly get heart attack patients from the first 9-1-1 call to hospital treatment. [Read more…]
The main entrance to Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge is pictured above at night. (Photo courtesy Covenant Health)
Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge tied for fourth in the state in an annual ranking of America’s best hospitals compiled by U.S. News and World Report.
MMC tied for fourth with Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville. Covenant Health’s third major medical center, Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville, ranked ninth in Tennessee.
All three were in the Top 10 for metro areas, a press release said. All three were lauded for high performance in a variety of specialties such as gastroenterology and GI surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, and pulmonology, among others. All three hospitals also achieved patient satisfaction levels that are higher than national and state averages.
 [Read more…]
Firefighters remove water from Patriot Park Assisted Living on Gum Hollow Road after putting out a small bed fire Friday evening.
Note: This story was updated at 8 p.m.
There were no injuries, but residents were briefly evacuated after a bed caught fire at an assisted living center in west Oak Ridge on Friday.
The fire at Patriot Park Assisted Living on Gum Hollow Road was reported at about 6 p.m. Friday. The building’s sprinkler system kept it in check, and crews were able to put out the fire, which was confined to one room, in about three minutes with a 1.75-inch water line, Oak Ridge Fire Department Chief Darryl Kerley said.
There were 13 patients and two staff members in the building. Patients were put into ambulances and checked out, and everyone was okay, Kerley said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. [Read more…]
Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge
Methodist Medical Center says it will ‘vigorously’ refute allegations
Note: This story was last updated at 3:38 p.m.
Five lawsuits filed in Anderson County on Monday allege that X-ray and radiologic technologists, including two who were pregnant, were exposed to excess radiation for several years at Methodist Medical Center because some walls in and around a radiology imaging center in the new emergency department were built without the required lead shielding, elevating the workers’ risk of health problems, including cancer.
The five lawsuits allege the walls in the emergency department, which opened in February 2006 as part of a hospital remodel, did not have the required protective radiological shielding because of building, design, and inspection errors.
Lead-lined walls are required in radiological areas to limit radiation exposure under local and federal regulations and construction and health standards, the lawsuits say.
But the defendants—Covenant Health of Knoxville, Rentenbach Engineering Co. of Knoxville, and TEG Architects LLC of Jeffersonville, Ind.—failed to have qualified personnel survey or check the installation and construction parameters, or conduct proper barrier determinations for lead barrier thickness, to ensure that the walls in the radiological areas would adequately reduce scatter and leakage radiation, the lawsuits say. The defendants also failed to have qualified personnel certify that the MMC in-department imaging center and nearby areas were built in compliance with all applicable regulations and guidelines so that the plaintiffs “would only be exposed to levels of radiation that were as low as reasonably achievable, all before allowing work to be done at that facility.†[Read more…]
