Valley Hospital strikes deal with Anchorage radiologists

PALMER-- Valley Hospital Association finalized a contract last month with Anchorage-based Alaska Imaging Associates to provide staff radiologists at both Valley Hospital in Palmer and Valley Hospital Medical Center in Wasilla. The deal was struck in July, and announced in a press release form VHA last week. In a separate release, the hospital announced the installation of a new Computer Aided Tomography [CT] scanning and tele-radiology equipment. The contract includes a commitment by Alaska Imaging Associates (AIA) to provide 24-hour coverage by radiologists for the hospital.

VHA has been looking for a new provider of staff radiologists since last March, when the local practice Mat-Su Radiology announced that it could no longer provide staff radiologists for VHA and would quit business as a result of radiologists retiring and others moving away.

Mat-Su Radiology officially quit in early June. During the interim between the two working agreements the hospital used a service that provided radiologists on a temporary or "locum tenems" basis.

Dr. Lester Lewis MD, medical director of Alaska Imaging Associates, said his practice is also working with temporary physicians at the moment, but that AIA will grow to accommodate the VHA contract, and he is working with the hospital to recruit more radiologists.

"We're looking for three radiologists right now," Lewis said. "We want two immediately and then hopefully three ultimately who would live out in the Valley and fill the positions [at Valley Hospital]."

AIA has been in business for 10 years and currently provides staff radiologists for Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage. Staff physicians are physicians with hospital privileges such as admitting patients and using hospital resources -- they may be but are not necessarily employees of the hospital where they work.

It can vary from hospital to hospital and within hospitals some physicians, such as emergency room doctors, may be employees of the hospital. In the case of VHA's radiology department, the staff radiologists are not employed directly by the hospital, but the technicians in the radiology department are.

VHA advertised nationwide to find a new provider of radiologists for its hospital in Palmer and imaging center in VHA Wasilla. AIA will work both in-house during regular hours and on-call 24 hours a day using tele-radiology technology that is new to Valley Hospital.

"I know that when we met with [VHA CEO] George Larson, he was particularly interested in the fact that we could provide the whole package," Lewis said. "We already had an existing team."

VHA has installed a tele-radiology system called Emed, that enables physicians to read CT, ultrasound and X-ray films in their homes.

Lewis said he and the other AIA physicians were "very pleased" with the contract.

"Hospital administrators have worked diligently to create a full service radiology department, and the equipment upgrades are tremendous," Lewis said.

Valley's new CT machine is leased from a company called Siemens Medical Systems at a cost of about $15,000 per month.

A nearly identical machine will be installed at VHA's imaging center in Wasilla. One difference with the Wasilla-based machine is that it will be used to screen patients for coronary artery calcification -- a condition that can be a sign of the patient's risk of having a sudden heart attack, according to Lewis. The coronary arteries are the arteries that carry the blood that feeds the muscle cells of the heart itself, as opposed to those arteries carrying blood to the rest of the body.

"There's some specialized software that is used for outpatient screening," Lewis said. "There is a relationship between coronary artery calcification and the potential for having an acute cardiac event -- the best way to describe that is a heart attack or a rapid-onset heart attack."

In Palmer, VHA is installing a digital radiology (DR) room which will make reading images faster when radiologists are working in conjunction with emergency room doctors. DR technology produces images that can be viewed on a computer within minutes. Prior to this technology, all images had to be developed on film, which takes significantly longer.

"Emergency Department physicians can have the images in under five minutes from the time when the exam was performed," Lewis said. "Time means everything in the ER, and investment in this DR room means quicker diagnosis for ailing patients."

Other procedures that will be new to VHA's radiology department include CT and ultrasound guided biopsies, abnormal fluid collections, joint injections, nerve root blocks of the back and neck and contrast studies of the kidneys. Other members of Alaska Imaging Associates serving the Valley include Bradley Cruz MD, Julee Holayter MD, and Lawrence Wood MD. Dr. Cruz specializes in pediatric patients.