About this story series
This is the sixth in a series of Sunday stories on major hospitals serving Butler County. The Journal interviewed hospital executives about plans for their organizations in the year ahead, and how pivotal 2013 is for the major employers as they adjust for health care reform.
Feb. 10: West Chester Hospital
Feb. 17: Mercy Health — Fairfield Hospital
Feb. 24: Fort Hamilton Hospital
March 10: McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital
March 17: Atrium Medical Center
TODAY: Bethesda Butler County TriHealth Hospital
Missed a story? Read past stories online at www.journal-news.com or www.middletownjournal.com
Since Cincinnati hospital system TriHealth bought last year the former Butler County Medical Center in Hamilton on Hamilton-Mason Road, the system has acted fast to ramp up services.
The 23-acre campus, previously physician-owned, already had a small 10-bed hospital, physical therapy and imaging services, laboratory and sleep study center.
TriHealth renamed the center Bethesda Butler County. It implemented last July new electronic medical record technology that connects Bethesda Butler to TriHealth’s Cincinnati hospitals Bethesda North and Good Samaritan, and to doctor offices.
New services were added such as TriHealth’s Heart Institute, which opened offices on the Hamilton campus October last year. The cardiology doctor’s practice has physicians seeing patients in Hamilton who offer cardiac diagnostic and testing services.
Other physician practices that have opened offices on campus include the internal medicine group Physician Associates of Good Samaritan Hospital — Northwest. Ross Pediatrics, part of the doctors group Queen City Physicians, relocated offices from Ross Twp. to Bethesda Butler.
On Feb. 1, TriHealth opened and added a new emergency department to the mix in Butler County, that’s open 24/7.
“Our strategy up there with our Bethesda Butler campus…we believe that the Hamilton and Fairfield communities and Butler County are looking and are hungry for more services within their backyard,” said Steve Mombach, TriHealth vice president of ambulatory services. “Our initial focus has really been to broaden the community with the services that we have.”
At the time the system bought the medical center, a medical office building on site was about 27 percent full, Mombach said. By the end of 2013, the hope is to totally fill the building.
One of the new additions this year in the office building will be TriHealth’s Cancer Institute. The practice will bring oncology specialists and open an infusion unit for general and cancer infusion services, Mombach said.
Not all services make sense at a 10-bed hospital, he said. Bethesda Butler’s surgical services include knee and shoulder replacements, or treating appendicitis. But bigger surgeries on heart valves, for example, can’t be performed at the facilities.
“We really wanted to be a self-sufficient campus, so we wanted to bring specialists onto the campus,” Mombach said.
Before the Heart Institute opened Hamilton offices, the hospital had no consultative cardiology services, said Dr. Craig Sukin, an interventional cardiologist seeing patients in Butler County.
The group offers outpatient consultative services and diagnostic testing such as cardiac ultrasound (echocardiography), stress testing including nuclear stress testing, and vascular ultrasound, Sukin said.
Also, the Heart Institute offers inpatient cardiology services now the emergency department has opened — doctors are available for consultation if patients are admitted with chest pain, for example.
Contact with TriHealth cardiologists can connect Bethesda Butler patients to new and more advanced heart services at TriHealth’s main Cincinnati hospitals.
The specialists in Hamilton can evaluate patients for new services and do follow-up locally.
“People don’t like to travel for services they don’t have to travel for. If there’s something unique, like a big surgery, they will travel for it, but for the more routine things like follow-up, evaluation, testing, they will travel if they have to, but people prefer not to,” Sukin said.
“I think over time we will expand what’s available here as well,” he said.
Right now general cardiology services are available at Bethesda Butler. The cardiology practice will look to add more services such as doctors who specialize in rhythm disorders, he said.
Bethesda Butler has 150 full-time equivalent employees. TriHealth announced in November 2011 it had finalized an agreement to purchase Butler County Medical Center and consolidate it into Bethesda Hospital, effective March 1, 2012.
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