NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Updates Emergency Department with a New Computer Tomography (CT) Scanner - Providing Faster Testing, Quicker Diagnoses, and Less Wait Time for Patients
The new equipment is part of NYC Health + Hospitals' broader multi-year redesign to build a competitive, sustainable organization that will continue to offer high-quality and accessible health care to the people of New York City
Jun 25, 2019
NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue today announced the installation of a new state-of-the-art Computerized Tomography (CT) Scanner in the Emergency Department, part of a series of modern, high-technology additions to the Radiology Service planned over the summer at the hospital that will reduce wait times, produce faster and better image quality, and lead to quicker diagnoses and treatment for patients, particularly critical patients in the Emergency Department. NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue is the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Manhattan south of 62nd Street. It provides care to thousands of patients, with more than 110,000 emergency room visits a year.
“Radiology and nursing staff now have new, state-of-the-art and dependable medical equipment available to support the care of our patients. The new scanner enables us to provide more efficient and effective diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” said Michael Rawlings, Chief Operating Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue.
The $6.5 million dollar project will add a total of four new state-of-the-art medical machines at the hospital: two new CT Scanners and two new MRI machines. Installation of the second CT scanner will be completed in the coming weeks and the new MRI machines will be installed over the summer.
CT Scanners create cross-sectional x-ray images, also known as “slices,” which are tomographic images of the internal body. The new CT scanner model can process 128-sliced images, while the previous model processed 64-sliced images. This increase in sliced images will enhance care to critical patients by:
- producing faster image reconstruction with high resolution and better image quality,
- providing an examination-split that runs multiple examinations simultaneously for patients requiring multiple tests, and
- reducing steps for medical staff.
And for young patients, as well as nervous patients of all ages, there is a distraction tool that displays animated fish, cats, dogs, an animal guessing game and a step-by-step video of the procedure to help ease concerns.
CT Scanners can show a patient’s skeleton, organs, tissues, and even help identify abnormalities such as tumors, which might indicate cancer. The CT scanner’s cross-sectional images are created from a motorized x-ray stored in the circular body of a CT scanner, where patients are incrementally moved through the donut-shaped hole, called a “gantry,” until the required number of sliced images are generated. Detail and quality is improved when the CT scanner can process more image slices.
The NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Emergency Department is a Level 1 Trauma Center, which specializes in cardiac catheterization, cardiopulmonary bypass, and hemodialysis, and has a trauma suite designed to provide acute care for critically ill patients.