By K. Richard Douglas
The town square is as American as apple pie. Put a courthouse in the center of it, and surround it with a beautiful park, and it becomes the quintessential small-town gathering place. This is just part of the splendor of Prescott, Arizona; a town with an impressive granite courthouse and a green, tree-filled grassy park, known as the plaza, at its core. Surrounded by restaurants and shops, it’s a place to relax and people-watch.
Nestled among tall ponderosa pine trees, its location in Yavapai County is only 125 miles from the Grand Canyon and 60 miles from Sedona.
The plaza is considered one of the top 10 public spaces in the U.S. The local hospital is impressive as well.
Yavapai Regional Medical Center is the region’s leading not-for-profit health care provider. With its related facilities, it provides medical care and other resources to an area of 5,500 square miles and covers the communities of Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey, Humboldt, Mayer, Paulden, Bagdad, Yarnell, Kirkland, Skull Valley and Crown King.
“Yavapai Regional Medical Center (YRMC), located 90-minutes north of Phoenix in north-central Arizona, was incorporated in 1942. What started as a simple, community hospital in the old Jefferson School building on Marina Street is today a state-of-the-art health care system with two acute care hospitals, a nationally renowned heart program, a network of primary and specialty care clinics, outpatient health and wellness centers, cardiac diagnostic centers, and outpatient medical imaging centers,” says Dennis Wells, CBET, director of biomedical engineering.
In addition to Wells, the team is made up of senior biomedical engineering technicians Bob Wilkinson, CBET; Bruce Thornbrugh, CBET; Anthony Parlin and Chris Elley.
The department is responsible for 5,780 devices between two medical center campuses and 28 medical clinics. In the near future, the department will transition its name to Healthcare Technology Management.
The team members have areas of specialization, which allows for keeping much of the service in-house. Bob Wilkinson specializes in OR anesthesia and ventilators. Bruce Thornbrugh specializes in OR anesthesia and ventilators. Chris Elley specializes in CT imaging and Anthony Parlin works in general biomed.
Besides working on equipment at Yavapai Regional Medical Center West, which is in the heart of Prescott, the team also has duties at Yavapai Regional Medical Center East, which is east, and slightly north, of the downtown Prescott area. The East location is a 72-bed acute care hospital built in 2006, while the West location is a 134-bed facility.
The group also maintains a good working relationship with the information systems (IS) department.
“Biomed and our IS department work hand-in-hand, whether it is ensuring a device is mapped to an EMR or working together to ensure a device’s electronic footprint works within our environment,” Wells says.
Serving the Community
The biomed team members do not limit their service to their clinical colleagues, and the patients that visit the hospitals and clinics. They also serve the greater local community.
“The slogan for Prescott, or ‘Prescutt’ as referred to by people born and raised here, is ‘Everybody’s Home Town.’ Our biomedical team plays a significant role in the delivery of YRMC’s health care mission and is vital to the hospital communities we serve. YRMC is a sole community provider and is the only source of not-for-profit acute care services to the region,” Wells says.
He says that the local community truly depends on YRMC and the support of the biomedical team.
“A prime example is YRMC’s ‘Partners for Healthy Students Program,’ which provides free health care to underserved children in the region. This is one of many programs we support. At the heart of this grant-funded program is a state-of-the-art mobile clinic. Biomed not only maintains all of the equipment onboard; we were consulted as the medical equipment experts on what would be needed to provide quality health care. The expert collaboration between clinicians and the biomed department ensures we have healthy, well-cared-for children in our community,” Wells says.
Prescott is a beautiful community and has been rated as one of the best places to retire, as well as to raise a family. Its first-class health care is further bolstered by a dedicated biomed staff that supports the community as much as they manage their equipment inventory.
