Donors save lives through critical care expansion project
Carolyn Latierra was biking to work at the Corvallis Co-op last May when suddenly her world went black. She regained consciousness to find the rear tire of a 5,000-pound SUV parked on top of her. The vehicle struck her, dragged her along the ground, and was now slowly crushing her.
An ambulance rushed Carolyn to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, where the trauma team immediately stabilized her, caring for cracked vertebrae, damaged internal organs and a punctured lung, among many other wounds. A week later, she was able to walk out of the hospital.
Carolyn is deeply appreciative of the care she received at Good Sam. “Everything about my treatment at Good Sam was amazing,” she said. “I thank everyone there from the bottom of my heart.”
Each year, more than 300 trauma patients like Carolyn come to Good Sam for lifesaving care. And the number is increasing annually. Thanks to generous donor support, Good Sam is keeping pace with the growing need for first-rate trauma care – opening the doors to a brand new Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit in July. The expansion project doubled the capacity of the ED, adding new patient and family areas; a new covered entrance exclusively for ambulances; upgraded, state-of-the-art equipment, and more. The project also increased the number of ICU beds to 20 while improving nursing stations and enhancing sight lines for patient monitoring.
Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation donors contributed $2,000,000 to help make this project happen, including a recent $75,000 gift from Corvallis Radiology that provides patients with life-saving diagnostic tools right in the Emergency Department. Patients who receive life-saving care, and their loved ones, will be grateful for this generosity for years to come.
Pastega House celebrates five years
About two weeks after starting her new job as supervisor of the Mario Pastega House, Gloria Lekkerkerker met someone she will never forget. He was the father of a boy who had suffered a traumatic brain injury, lying unconscious in the Good Sam ICU. The father was staying at the Pastega House to be as close as possible to his son while he fought for his life.
“It really was a life or death situation for the patient,” Gloria said. “He was surviving an hour at a time.” While sitting in Gloria’s office, the father told her through tears how much the Pastega House meant to him. “
Because of the condition his son was in, a five-minute sprint to the hospital versus a ten minute drive from a motel literally made all the difference in the world,” Gloria said. Gloria and her staff encounter people like this man almost every day – guests whose lives are deeply impacted by the house. In fact, the house, which averages 450 guests per month, celebrated its fifth anniversary on Sept. 19. More than 27,000 guests found comfort and rest at the house during those five years.
Many guests, especially those staying for long periods of time, struggle to pay the minimal $20 per night fee. Since 2004, the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation has funded more than 3,000 nights of lodging for low-income guests, as well as operating an endowment for the house to ensure that no one is ever turned away.
“If it wasn’t for donors to the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation, we would have to turn away a lot of people,” Gloria said.
Upgrade keeps cancer center on cutting edge
Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation donors recently contributed $100,000 toward the purchase of an equipment upgrade that will make a big difference for patients at Samaritan Regional Cancer Center: an onboard imaging system for one the center’s Varian linear accelerators.
While treating radiation therapy patients with a linear accelerator, physicians and therapists at the cancer center need to acquire frequent images of the patient’s tumor to ensure reproducibility. But the previous system took several minutes to process an image, increasing the potential for motion errors.
“Imagine a patient with a tumor near their diaphragm,” said Brad Betz, manager of Radiation Oncology at Samaritan Regional Cancer Center. “That tumor is moving as the patient breathes. With our previous limitations, we were unable to track motion. But this new onboard imaging system allows us to create images of the tumor in real-time, and in 3-D. These are two huge improvements that will allow us to confidently manage patients and target movement before and during treatments.”
Betz, who has worked in cancer centers from Seattle to San Francisco, says that the onboard imaging system means that Samaritan Regional Cancer Center will remain in the top tier of cancer centers on the west coast.
“This is really significant for our patients,” he said.