About $1.6 million has been raised to help buy new equipment for the new Allen County Hospital, said Jim Gilpin, chairman of the United for Excellence campaign.
“That’s one-third of our goal,” Gilpin said to a crowd gathered at Allen County Country Club Thursday evening to celebrate fundraising progress.
Almost $5 million is needed to make every wish come true, including the purchase of an MRI machine, a more sophisticated CT scanner, new patient beds, and other things.
The hospital will set itself apart from area competition with the purchase of a 64-slice CT machine, said Cris Rivera, chief executive officer of ACH. The $732,000 machine has the ability to create more detailed images of a person’s internal organs, said David Paul, director of imaging at the hospital.
Paul suggested using the image of a sliced loaf of bread as to how a CT scanner works.
“If you have 15 slices, you’re missing a ton of what you can see. If you have 64 slices, varied in width, you then have the ability to reconstruct the images into a three-dimensional format through a software program, giving you amazing detail.
“The heart is the most challenging organ to get a good picture of because it is constantly in motion — at least we want it to be,” he said with a smile. “Motion is one of the enemies of imaging. The faster you can scan, the greater imaging capabilities you’ll receive.”
With the purchase of a $1.1 million MRI machine, the hospital will be able to provide those imaging services in-house, also setting it apart from other area hospitals.
Currently, a mobile MRI services visits the hospital several times a week.
GIFTS HAVE come in the form of outright cash, and gifts of stock, land and life insurance policies.
A recent program of giving a tax rebate for up to 70 percent of gifts was overwhelmingly successful, said Karen Gilpin, a United for Excellence member.
Organizers had up to 18 months to gather $190,000 in gifts.
“We did it in seven days,” Gilpin said. The program was through the Kansas Department of Commerce.
The size of gifts also comes with naming opportunities, said Karen Gilpin. She and Mary Ann Arnott used a layout of the new hospital to show what rooms and areas could be named after individuals. The entire hospital campus, for example, can be named after an individual for a gift of $1 million or more.
Football great Peyton Manning, for example, has a hospital in Indianapolis renamed Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital at St. Vincent. In Dallas, the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Center will be named the William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, after its former governor.
Other naming opportunities exist for the lobby, surgery areas, waiting rooms, nursery, patient rooms, and many other sites.
