Patients compare emergency care costs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 15, 2012 -- PROVO, Utah — A short time ago resident Mike Mittanck went to a local hospital with severe abdominal pain.

Doctors performed a CT Scan (Computerized Axial Tomography or CAT Scan) and found nothing. Concerned, they gave him a shot of Demoral to ease the pain and kept him overnight for observation.

"They never did find out what was wrong with me," he said.

His bill: over $6,000.

About the same time Julie Webster, an MRI technologist to Dr. Wendell Gibby, a radiologist and owner of Riverwoods Imaging Center, experienced similar symptoms. Rather than go to a hospital emergency room she saw physicians at the recently opened Blue Rock Medical Center across the hallway from were she worked. They provided a similar CT procedure and gave her a shot of Demoral. But this time they found kidney stones.

Her bill: about $600.

While the overnight stay escalated Mittanck's bill, the opening of Blue Rock Emergency Care now gives people a choice between an expensive emergency room, often with long waits, and Blue Rock, which is equipped much like a small hospital with state-of-the-art radiology services in the same new building, Gibby noted.

"We have the capability of an ER," physician assistant Barry Clanton said.

It provides those services at much less cost and even gives discounts for cash, up to 50 percent, Gibby said. Blue Rock Medical Center is located at 3152 N. University Ave., about a mile north of the Lavell Edwards Stadium at Brigham Young University, in the same architecturally striking Riverwoods Imaging Center.

The urgent care facility has easy access to state-of-the-art imaging including CAT scans, MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) , ultra sound and X-ray, as well as diagnostic services. A full medical laboratory is in the works, and once in place the medical center will be able to match small hospitals with diagnostic capabilities, Clanton said.

Newly hired medical personnel include another physician's assistant, David Miller, with a background in family practice, general medical and urgent care. Another doctor, S. Dwayne Roberts, headed the family practice section of Intermountain Health Care.

While the medical center is much smaller than a regional hospital, it offers similar services and has more capability than small clinics that often lack the technology available in hospitals, he said.

"No other urgent care in the state has similar access to advanced diagnostic technology," Gibby said. "We can do things that allow very low outpatient or an intermediate level of care often handled at hospitals. An outpatient can save thousands," Gibby said.

Not only are Gibby's radiology services handy to Blue Rock patients, they were also recently used to scan the brain and eyes of an American Eagle, injured when it collided with a car. That experience illustrates the facility's ability to do high resolution, small field imaging, useful for his large clientele of attorneys who deal with auto and other accidents.

The imaging center is able to evaluate traumatic brain injury at a level not found in most routine imaging centers or hospitals, Gibby said.

CAT Scan     CT scans     emergency care     health     hospitals     medical devices     mri     Wendell Gibby