Annual Report 2010 - Gifford Medical Center

hospital division
Left, Ginny Sedgwick registers patients right at their
bedside in the Gifford Emergency Department.
Right, Emergency Department Director and Physician
Dr. Steve Fischer cares for patient Greg Winnie of East
Randolph.
High-quality,
timely emergency medicine
Visit a hospital emergency department almost anywhere
else in the country and it’s likely that your wait for care
is long. The movie “Sicko” depicts the worst of the often
heart-crushing reality – patients dying on an Emergency
Department waiting room floor as they await care that
never comes.
That’s the extreme. But, according to Gifford Emergency
Department Director Dr. Steve Fisher, “It is not unusual
in many emergency rooms to wait as long as six to eight
hours to get in, and 24-
hour wait times are not
“The
experience
opened my
eyes to the
valuable
team of
professionals
we have
here.”
Dave Eddy,
Bethel
uncommon.”
At Gifford, “our wait times
are among the lowest in the
nation,” says Dr. Fisher. In
fact, patients are not only
receiving timely emergency
care, but also some of the best
care medicine anywhere has to
offer.
Staff members are highly
trained – many meeting
rigorous standards for national
certifications for emergency
medicine. Some also work
at area tertiary care centers
to hone their trauma skills,
and many of the hospital’s
emergency department nurses
have worked in the field for 20 or 30 years.
“Gifford’s equipment and services compare to any other
emergency department,” says nurse manager Maureen
Heyder, who has been on the job since 1969. The available
diagnostic technology from CT scans to MRIs matches
that of larger hospitals.
“We can diagnose, treat and stabilize any emergency
medical condition. We have a number of state-of-the-art,
complex medical protocols,” adds Dr. Fisher, who has
been an emergency room doctor and director for 17 years.
Procedures for strokes and heart attacks, for example, can
result in quickly diagnosing and transferring heart attack
patients to area tertiary care centers for life-saving care.
Dave Eddy, 56, of Bethel suffered a heart attack in early
September. He was diagnosed in the Gifford Emergency
Department and then flown by DHART to Dartmouth-
Hitchcock Medical Center’s cardiac catheterization lab to
have a stent placed in a completely blocked artery.
Following his life saving care, Dave called his Gifford
emergency physician, Dr. Joshua White, and nurse Kelly
Burrell “the ultimate professional team.” The experience,
says Dave, “opened my eyes to the valuable team of
professionals we have available here. I applaud Gifford’s
quality of care.”
Thanks to a new piece of equipment purchased by the
Gifford Medical Center Auxiliary, emergency response
for many heart attack patients will be even quicker in
the future. With the new technology, emergency medical
technicians responding to a 911 call will be able to transfer
Gifford’s Best Kept Secrets - 10 -
Annual Report 2010