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Busy Times for Breast Cancer
The Breast Center at Queen of the Valley Hospital provides vital women's health services, including mammography, bone density scans, and breast health education, in a private and comfortable atmosphere. But the popularity of the Center is beginning to bump up against the limitations of the aging building that houses it.
"We are definitely getting busier every year," says Breast Center Clinical Coordinator Angie Mueller, RN. "And that is creating problems, because we don't have the room we need to grow."
She
notes that the number of mammograms the Center provides is up more than
50 percent in the past four years; 6,071 women received mammography
services in 1996, versus 9,295 in 2000. Things may get even more crowded
now that the Center has begun offering bone density scans, a service
that moved to the Center this past October.
"This is an important addition to what we can offer women," Angie says. "Right now we're not advertising the service so that we can be sure to keep up. We could do a lot more of these screenings if we had the space and the additional equipment."
Located on the second floor of the hospital's original main building, constructed in 1958, the Breast Center has run out of growing room. The pretty waiting are and the private mammography rooms are designed to minimize patients' awareness of the space restrictions, but the Center's technicians can't help but notice the problem when they must crowd into the work area when they view and check films and take care of other duties, a room litter bigger than a closet.
"Patients don't realize it's an issue," Angie says "but when five techs have to squeeze in here it's very, very cramped."
Wait times for appointments is one way the space squeeze does impact patients. "Right now we have an eight-week wait for mammography," Angie reports. "If our numbers continue to grow, the wait time may increase as well."
The old building also makes it hard to upgrade the Center's equipment. "We purchased a new processor for our films, which will be a big improvement over the one we are now using," Angie reports. "But it's sitting downstairs because we haven't been able to come up with a way to meet the current requirements for drainage and ventilation. Those kinds of problems are very expensive to solve in the old building."
