Hospital Board: Nursing awards, new MRI machine announced

Banner Washakie Medical Center CEO Jay Stallings shared at the May 23 meeting of the Board of Trustees that the week of May 15 was a national celebration for both hospitals and nurses. Washakie Medical Center held events and honored individuals to show support to their health care workers.

Awards and their winners were:

Contribution to Patients – Rosanne De La Rosa

Nurse Leadership – Brandy Kottman

Contribution to Profession – Keith Van Brunt

Contribution to Society – Shelly Ramos

Friend of Nursing – Jen Buckman

De La Rosa was also recognized as having won the DAISY Award for Nursing, an international award given to nurses who go above and beyond.

MRI machine

Stallings also announced that Washakie Medical Center would be obtaining a new magnetic resonance imaging machine. This piece of equipment is capable of creating detailed images of patients’ organs and tissues, and provides health care workers with a non-invasive method of seeing inside the human body.

The existing MRI machine at the hospital is from 2007, and over the past several years Stallings has been instrumental in the project to upgrade. The new machine will be a MAGNETOM Altea with a 1.5 Tesla magnetic field.

Stallings said, “I think this is an example of the advantages of being a part of the Banner organization; this community will have access to what I think is some of the finest diagnostic equipment, and again it’s being provided through the relationship that we have with the county.”

The MRI machine will be made in Germany and will take between 24 to 26 weeks to arrive at Washakie Medical Center. Stallings anticipates that it will be ready by February of next year at the latest.

Wellness Program

During last month’s meeting, the board trustees took a tour of the physical therapy center at the hospital and heard about comments from community members on interest in restarting the wellness program at the hospital. Previously, patrons could pay a membership fee to use the physical therapy center to exercise, but that program has since ended. Stallings said, “Back in the day when we started moving away from it, there were several reasons we did that. One of them was because COVID made it too difficult. Another reason was when we started getting really busy we just didn’t have the capacity to take care of the wellness program as well as the specific needs for physical therapy. But, we think we have that because things are modulating a little bit, so we are looking at this very optimistically.”

Although a decision has yet to be made, Stallings told board Chairman Dean Carrell, “I’d say you’ll be able to see a definition of the program within two months.”