Health Care at Home — Bell Hospital
Bell Hospital in Ishpeming is a critical access hospital with 25 beds and 500 employees.
In 2008, bell hospital moved from downtown Ishpeming to a hillside overlooking US–41.
And Bell has also beefed up its women’s health service line since then.
Vice president of organizational development Ruth Solinski says they have a new general surgeon, and they’ve also recently bought new stereotactic breast biopsy equipment.
It uses a needle to draw a sample of breast tissue, using a digital mammogram image is used as a guide.
Then the sample is tested to determine if the breast tissue is cancerous or benign.
A stereotactic biopsy leaves no scarring, it requires no stitches and it takes 30 minutes to an hour, instead of two to four hours for an open surgical biopsy.
Some of the services that potential patients have traditionally left Bell to receive elsewhere are similar to other u–p hospitals.
But Bell has worked on those areas recently, too.
Solinski says rehab services and orthopedics are both part of that group.
Press Ganey Associates conducts patient surveys at nearly 1,800 hospitals nationwide.
Bell frequently ranks high in those surveys.
In 2009, it was in the top one percent nationally for physician service and in the top two percent for overall patient satisfaction.
Solinski says the hospital’s staff takes quality of care very seriously and says it tends to comfort patients to realize that they’re very likely to know personally the physician tending to them.
We’ll wrap up our “Health Care at Home” series tomorrow night by looking at collaborative efforts between U.P. hospitals to stop outmigration.
Posted by: Mike Hoey