New wound care center means mostly elderly patients can receive
lengthy treatment in home town
Chronic wounds hassle about eight million Americans, mostly diabetics and the elderly, for whom a simple sore can fester into a crippling problem. Until now, though, the 500 or so who live in southern Santa Clara County had to drive nearly 50 miles up to Mountain View for treatment. No longer.
Saint Louise Regional Hospital welcomed its first patient Jan. 28 to the new Center for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine. This form of medicine speeds up the healing process by using gaseous pressure to administer high concentrations of oxygen to patients. They slide into one of two clear cylindrical chambers at the hospital – named Novellus and Calypso – and soak in 100 percent oxygen for about two hours a day, five days a week, for anywhere from four to eight weeks depending on their particular wounds.
Liz Strotman could not be happier that the center’s finally here. As the area marketing director for the Gilroy Healthcare Center and the Pacific Hills Manor in Morgan Hill, Strotman said she knows plenty of folks who will benefit from the new center.
“So many of our patients are crippled or diabetic, so they’re more likely to get wounds, and it can be from something as simple as sitting in a wheelchair for too long,” Strotman said. “This is just such an asset to nursing homes.”
The world’s first – and most crude – chambers date back to the early 1900s, but a hundred years later, Gilroy is now the sixth hyperbaric center between Sacramento and Santa Barbara, according to Lisa St. John, the clinic director for BayArea Hyperbarics in Mountain View. She came down Thursday night to attend the grand opening of the center and said it would benefit south county patients who are hard pressed to travel for treatment.
“This will change peoples’ lives. A lot of people would be on their way out if you can’t help them,” St. John said as Jonathan Morin, the center’s hyperbaric therapist, explained the chambers’ intricacies to wide-eyed visitors nibbling on cheese and fruit and sipping wine. Before he became a therapist, though, Morin said he spent nine years as a diver with the U.S. Navy and then trained for two years to receive certification from the National Board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Technology.
Now he is one of six associates and nurses who works at the center along side five physicians, all of whom have undergone intense training. Dr. Scott Benninghoven is the center’s medical director, his newest task after working at the hospital as a surgeon for the past 17 years, he said. He welcomed the first patient two months ago and described the process: Outpatients come to the hospital upon referral, whereupon Benninghoven and his associates give them thorough evaluations to determine the appropriate treatment. About 14 percent of patients then spend time in either Novellus or Calypso, he said.
Twelve-inch flat screens with cable help mitigate the confined time, though, and those who don’t require chamber treatment might benefit from Benninghoven’s time-tested hands: He removes tissue and performs other wound-relieving surgery on a portion of the eight or so patients that come through the center each day, he said.
There were about seven times that number rubbing shoulders in the hospital’s crowded corridors Thursday night, though, and Sister Paula Baker of the Sisters of the Presentation told the crowd the new center will allow the hospital to “improve the earth as the dwelling place of humanity.”
Charged by voters to improve Gilroy, on the other hand, Mayor Al Pinheiro attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and said he would work with the hospital’s CEO and President, Joanne Allen, and the city’s nonprofit Economic Development Corporation president, Larry Cope, to spread the word about the city’s medical business.
About 500 area patients had to seek wound care elsewhere last year, according to the hospital’s chief financial officer, Chelva Kumar, Ph.D. Kumar declined to say how much money the hospital has lost to other wound care center, but he and Allen said they hoped to serve about 200 this year as word gets out through the mayor’s efforts and physician referrals. Along with Diversified Clinical Services – a Florida-based wound care company that works with hospitals to establish and manage wound healing centers – Kumar said the center cost about $750,000 and took two years to materialize.
Saint Louise belongs to the Daughters of Charity Health System, a regional healthcare system of five hospitals spanning the California coast from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. Father Robert McKay used to work O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, another DCHS hospital, but he said he came to Gilroy three months ago, just as the center was about to open.
“Now people can come here, and it can be done,” said McKay, who is one of three chaplains providing spiritual guidance at the hospital.
