8
MEDICAL SERVICES WELCOME
»
Continued from Page 6
same day, Joseph said. “Now it’s seamless,” he said. “The whole idea was to limit the run-around time.” The center has multiple functions, too. CAIHC also provides support services to 23 rural clinics, including prescription filling, lab work and stocking medical supplies. In the expanded pharmacy area are two automatic dispensers that count out and bottle the most-used prescriptions. One is for patients who visit the center; the other is for patients in rural areas. Those are packaged and mailed in a room designed for such use. The pharmacy daily fills about 750 prescriptions for walk-in patients and mails about 650 prescriptions to rural patients. “We were tripping over each other before,” Joseph said. The pharmacy will soon be providing chemotherapy medicine for cancer patients, in collaboration with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Other changes include a radiology department with state of the art X-ray equipment and 3-D mammography imaging, the first in Alaska. The way patients are notified the medical staff is ready to see them also has changed. Now instead of staff calling out patients’ names, something some people felt violated privacy, they give the patients a buzzer, jokingly called “the puck,” which will buzz and light up when it’s time to go back to the exam room. That way people can visit with others in the expansive waiting areas and not worry about missing their name being called. “Before, if you went to the bathroom, you would come out and everyone would say, ‘They called your name,’” said Freda Williams, a patient and Fairbanks resident. “I always wondered how people knew who I was.” The exam suites have two types of rooms. One is for physical exams. The new design includes “talking rooms,” where a patient, family members and friends can meet with a provider to discuss treatment options and further care. Charles Bettisworth, owner of BettisworthNorth, the architect firm that designed the new center, said
CHIEF ANDREW ISAAC HEALTH CENTER Phone: (907) 451-6682, (800)459-6682 Fax: (907) 459-3811 Mailing address 1717 West Cowles St. Fairbanks, Alaska 99701 Urgent care Monday-Sunday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Medical appointments Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pharmacy Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Lab Monday-Sunday 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Radiology Monday-Sunday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Dental Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eye clinic Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Need medical aid in a hurry? CAIHC can handle it By DIANA CAMPBELL
cies, should the need arise. The services proved essential It seemed like a straightforfor Jones and her daughter. ward call from the school. KimOn the road to the center, berlee Jones’s daughter Jaylen, Jones looked in her rearview 7, was sick and she should pick mirror to see how her daughter her up. was doing. Jaylen looked flushed, like “I didn’t recognize her,” she she was getting the flu, when said. “Her face was twice her her mother saw her in the school normal size. Hives from head to nurse’s office. As the nurse filled toes. She told me she couldn’t in Jones about what Jaylen had breathe.” eaten that day, things went horShe got to the clinic as quickly ribly wrong. as possible, somehow managing “She violently threw up about to stay calm enough to drive. At five times,” Jones said. “I decid- the entrance, a greeter rushed ed to take her to the clinic.” her and the child back to the Chief Andrew Isaac Health exam room. The staff determined Center was a short drive from Jaylen was having an allergic the school. While the center does reaction. Within two minutes not have emergency room serupon arriving, Jaylen was given vices, it does provide urgent care. two adult shots of epinephrine. Urgent care services are those in Jones offered to hold the girl which a patient can’t wait for a while they gave her the shots, as regular appointment and needs Jaylen started to resist. to be seen the same day. The “They said, ‘We don’t have staff can also handle emergentime for that,’” Jones said.
they found this was an important feature when they built the Southcentral Foundation Clinic in Anchorage. When someone is sick, family members and friends are their caregivers, he said. They need to understand the illness and care, too, he said. The center’s larger space means fewer visits to Anchorage for some patients who need special medical services at the Alaska Native Medical Center, said Jacoline Bergstrom, TCC’s deputy health director. The larger space means more Anchorage providers now come to Fairbanks to offer care. “More specialty providers come on a regular basis, such as rheumatology, ENT, neurosurgery, liver health, and cardiology,” she said. The center now has two OB/GYN and three midwifes, she said. In the past, much of prenatal care was contracted to other local physicians, but the center will now do most of the treatment in-house, including the offering of ultrasounds. The center has room for expansion, TCC’s Joseph said. Planning for the future has always been an ongoing process. “How do we get better at what we’re doing in the next five, 10 or 20 years?” he said. “None of this happens by mistake.” Neither does the service, Joseph said. The warm and inviting design, the comfortable waiting areas and expanded medical care are meant for the center’s beneficiaries. This is why the center’s greeters make a point of saying “Thank you” as patients leave. “Because we know you don’t have to come here,” Joseph said.
“That’s when I knew how serious it was. They saved her life.” She and the providers think Jaylen had a reaction to sunflower butter that was served as a snack in a sandwich at school, but the young girl is going through more tests. “She never has any other food allergies,” Jones said. “But she’s never had a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich before.” The CAIHC doctor prescribed prednisone, a powerful steroid, for Jaylen, as food allergies can flare up again after an initial reaction, despite avoiding the trigger food. The family is in the process, with the help of the medical team led by Dr. Steven Jay, to understand and take care of Jaylen. “The doctor went through everything,” she said. “I’m so grateful. I can’t sing the praises of that team strongly enough.”
Photo by Rachel Saylor