Incisive CT scanner helps rural hospital get to the heart of the matter

Ferry County Health is a 25-bed critical access hospital located in Republic, WA, a commercial logging community that shares its northern border with Canada and is home to just 2,000 people. Imaging manager, Adam Volluz, who was also raised in Republic, feels dedicated to the hospital mission to “strengthen the health and well-being of our community through partnership and trust.”

This mission came to the forefront when, Volluz says, he had to rely on trust when making the critical investment in a new CT for their facility. “We were ranked unhealthiest county in Washington state back in 2019,” he recalls. “We have a lot of chest-pain patients coming through the ER. We had been offering everything else, but cardiac imaging.”

During the meetings with Philips, Volluz was originally hesitant to change vendors to a new solution, however he said that he quickly recognized that the Philips team was treating him as a valued partner and worked on finding the best solution for his facility and his patients. “They looked at our community hospital as a partnership,” says Volluz. “They saw the value in building relationships. That to me, showed a lot of integrity. We got a very nice product for a very reasonable price.”

The Incisive CT is going to bring a lot of new diagnostic features to his hospital including better capabilities in managing critical emergency patients. However, the feature he says he is most excited about offering is the Cardiac Plus SW, which will allow Ferry County to conduct calcium scoring and other advanced cardiac exams which they were previously unable to support.

The rapid motion of the heart, in combination with the small size of blood vessels, make Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) one of the most challenging CT scans to perform. Although recent innovations have helped overcome these challenges, certain patients are still difficult to scan including those with coronary artery stents and bypass grafts, heart rates over 65 bpm, high BMIs and arrhythmias.

Philips Incisive CT features a fast 0.35-second gantry rotation speed that improves temporal resolution by 30% in cardiovascular studies¹ and post-processing algorithms that allow for exams such as retrospective tagging, calcium scoring acquisition and analysis, cardiac coronary artery analysis and cardiac function analysis.

In addition to having the ability to perform cardiac imaging, Volluz says image acquisition and reconstruction will be the biggest benefits of Incisive CT to his patients. “[Right now] our biggest time delays are in image acquisition and reconstruction,” says Volluz. “With our current CT, we’re waiting anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes for a full trauma series to reconstruct, prior to being able to get images off to the radiologist. We’re probably going to be able to cut that time by a lot [with the Incisive CT] – one to two minutes; max five minutes for reconstruction speeds.”

“What that means,” he continues, “is that ER receiving doctors at tertiary hospitals are going to be able to evaluate those images even before patients are on helicopter ready to go out. That is going to be a huge boost to our community.”

With its previous CT system, the hospital was averaging three CT exams a day, and Volluz expects the number to greatly increase with the Incisive CT. The Incisive CT’s OnPlan patient-side gantry controls feature a simplified and intuitive workflow directly from the scanner, and are proven to decrease time to results by 19%.²

The gantry controls also enable techs to do more directly from the scanner, including setup and pre-scan adjustments. More time spent by the patient’s side can make them less anxious. “I’ve been doing CT [imaging] for 16 years,” says Volluz. “The workflow with this piece of equipment; that’s what really sold me. We have a lot of scared, elderly patients and being able to stand by their side without stepping out for a 5- to 10-second scan, it is super important to them.”

When Philips Incisive CT is installed, Volluz anticipates being able to perform advanced cardiac scans, greatly reduce reconstruction times and overall increase revenue by being able to serve patients at Ferry County Health instead of sending them to larger hospitals.

Benefits Ferry County Health hopes to achieve are:*

By upgrading to Philips Incisive CT, Ferry County Health is keeping pace with technology and offering innovations that were once only available two-and-a-half hours away in Spokane. With advanced scanning capabilities, precision images that help promote clinical confidence and acquisition and reconstruction times that benefit trauma patients, Volluz is well positioned to realize increased revenue by not having to send patients away to larger hospitals. He also has peace of mind in knowing that Ferry County Health is capable of taking care of its own.