Greenville – Beginning Monday, Open Imaging of Greenville joins the Hunt Regional Medical Center (HRMC) family to provide better service for customers.
Hunt Regional Open Imaging (HROI) will become the primary location for out-patient imaging services for hospital.
"This new partnership is important to the people of our service area - including our physician community - because it significantly strengthens continuity of care," said Richard Carter, CEO of Hunt Regional Healthcare (HRH).
Continuity of care is a cooperative process that allows physicians to track the medical progress of their patients over extended periods of time.
"As a result of having all local inpatient and outpatient imaging procedures under the same umbrella and read by the same radiologists, we will be able to provide physicians a continuing stream of images that have been acquired throughout each patient's lifetime," Carter said.
HROI will operate as a department of HRMC and will be part of the Imaging Services program headquartered at the medical center.
John Ervin, director of imaging services for Hunt Regional Healthcare since 2007, will oversee HRH imaging services at all locations.
The previous imaging files of all Open Imaging of Greenville patients are being integrated with Hunt Regional Medical Center's Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS), a state-of-the-art method of receiving, storing, distributing and presenting all types of digital images.
"Only our name is new," said Roy McGahee, a general partner in the Open Imaging organization. "Patients who use the services of HROI will continue to receive the same exceptional service and quality imaging that they've been accustomed to for the past 10 years."
Procedures that will be available at HROI include open MRI; CT scan; general, obstetrical and vascular ultrasound; and routine X-ray.
Outpatient services in digital mammography, nuclear medicine, bone densitometry and certain types of MRI exams will continue to be provided at HRMC because of the availability of special equipment for those services. All inpatient imaging services will continue to be provided at the medical center.
Separate telephone numbers for HROI and the imaging program at the medical center will continue for the time being. The HROI number is 903.455.3330, while the number at HRMC is 903.408.5005.
"This is an exciting step forward for quality healthcare in Hunt County," Carter said.