It's got to be more than a bumper-sticker advertising slogan.
NorthBay Healthcare's mission for quite some time has been: Compassionate care, advanced medicine, close to home. It's interesting, and at times irritating, to see others near and far purloin parts of our mission statement in their attempts to attract patients.
The difference is that we mean it and live it.
A case in point -- a recent front-page headline in the Daily Republic newspaper proclaimed, "New hope for hearts; Study: Mini clip is safer than heart-valve surgery".
It caught my attention for several reasons. NorthBay Medical Center is the only hospital in Solano County performing cardiac surgery, including heart-valve surgery. As someone who had rheumatic fever as a child and suffered some heart valve damage as a result, this development is of both personal and professional interest to me.
The article examined a new technology involving a device that may mitigate the need for cardiac surgery. It is apparently now use extensively in Europe and may be approved for use in the United States next year.
Medical professionals in this country are still debating whether this device is the better way to treat patients with severe heart valve disease. Many patients facing potential heart valve surgery would welcome the option of a less invasive procedure if this new device was approved for use in this country and their physician deemed it an appropriate treatment.
It is almost a certainty that should this new device be approved for use next year, it will only be available for use in those hospitals that have cardiac surgery backup.
Patients with severe heart valve disease who wish to avail themselves of this far less invasive treatment will have to have it done at such a hospital -- just in case a surgical intervention becomes necessary.
Which brings us back to NorthBay Medical Center, Solano's only hospital with the necessary cardiac surgery backup capability.One more proof that our mission of compassionate care, advanced medicine, close to home is much, much more than an advertising slogan.
We live it and we mean it. We continue to devote many resources to bring to this county the breadth and depth of services that a county of nearly 500,000 residents should have.
When you are part of the community fabric, rather than part of a large, distant organization with other priorities not focused on Solano County, you make decisions differently. We at NorthBay have just started the process of bringing advanced medicine close to home to Solano. More to come.
