New name and big changes for U.P. hospital

IRON RIVER — A new name for an Upper Peninsula hospital calls for growth and extended services.

Aspirus completed the acquisition of NORTHSTAR Health System in July 2014, and now the name has been officially changed to Aspirus Iron River Hospital & Clinics. Aspirus is looking to fulfill their promises of expanding their services, while remaining close to home.

“In each of the communities that we serve we look to expand services and offer as many services locally as feasible to do so,” said Senior Vice President, Regional Operations & Systems Integration Officer & Riverview Health System Interim CEO Rick Nevers.

“The opportunity to have more services here locally is a very exciting opportunity,” said CEO Connie Koutouzos, “not only for our medical staff, but for the community that we serve and our employees here.”

“We’re looking to continue expanding primary care,” said Aspirus Inc. President & CEO Matthew Heywood, “we’re looking to work to expand and partner on OB services, orthopedic services, general surgery services, a number of services. We have a sister hospital Asprius Grandview which is pretty close proximity, so I think there’s a lot of linkages and synergies that we can have with those organizations.”

Aspirus now has 8 hospitals, 60 clinics and over 7,000 employees, including over 260 in Iron County. Some of the changes that have already been made since the acquisition include the implementation of the new electronic medical record system, Epic which eliminates redundancies, and saves time for patients and medical staff.

“We share this data wherever there’s Epic,” said Family Medicine Physician Ray Koivunen, MD, “so with this EMR anything done here in Iron River whether it’s lab, x–ray, EKG’s, doctor’s notes, those are all instantly available throughout the system. So if that patient is referred, all of that information follows them.”