Thomas Hospital Foundation

The Thomas Hospital Foundation (the Foundation) provided almost 500,000 to Thomas Hospital during the year ended march 31, 2022, to purchase specific Hospital equipment and support Hospital activities. The Foundation provided over 150,000 to upgrade the monitoring and lighting system in Thomas hospitals open heart area. The prior equipment was no longer supported by the manufacturer and could not be repaired. With the new monitoring systems surgeons are able to more clearly visualize patient cardiac output and vitals. It is projected that this will affect approximately 550 procedures annually. A new scavie scout system was purchased for 63,000 to improve the treatment of certain breast cancer patients. Surgeons were dissatisfied with the prior system available at Thomas Hospital to stage axillary and sentinel lymph nodes and have been referring their patients to an affiliated Hospital that has been using this system for over 3 years to perform the procedure. The new system is able to more accurately and consistently deliver a marker to a lesion site. This will result in easier to locate markers for surgeons and smaller incisions for patients. Thomas Hospital did not have the newest technology for patients needing thoracic and abdominal radiation. An affiliated Hospital in a different county was getting referrals for these procedures because it had a newer varian gating system. Gating systems are used by radiation oncologists to limit radiation doses to critical structures of the chest and abdomen. The Foundation spent about 62,000 to bring this system to Thomas Hospital which it expects to cause an uptick in patients by preventing locals from having to travel to the next county over to receive this procedure. New laptops were purchased for use in the clinical and diabetes education departments. The old laptop operating software wasn't supported any longer and were prone to freezing up intermittently. This either resulting in needing to reboot the laptop of wait for someone from the it department to come fix it before it could be used again. These laptops are used daily and are needed to have an effective, efficient, and educated staff when training other employees or patients. A new small footprint ultrasound was purchased for the cath lab for its transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedures (tavr). Currently doctors were having to borrow small footprint ultrasounds from other departments to conduct their tavr procedures as sometimes they may need up to 13 individuals in the room at the same time. When the ultrasound isn't being used for tavr procedures, the extra capacity will be able to be utilized by the vascular department in some of their cases. This will also improve patient safety and comfort in the growing obese population, as their blood vessels are much deeper in the body, by reducing multiple needle sticks when attempting to locate blood vessels. This year the employee assistance fund granted 11,655 to employees facing unexpected or extraordinary financial circumstances.