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U.S. Rep. Peter Welch speaks with staff at the Centers for Living and Rehabilitation on Monday.
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Welch, left, speaks with administrator Suzanne Anair, SVHC President Thomas Dee and state Rep. Mary Morrisey.
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Touring the Centers for Living and Rehabilitation.
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In the 'vault' with Dr. Matthew Vernon and the hospital's linear accelerator.
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Vernon explains the laser and lighting tools used to pinpoint radiation treatments exactly.

Congressman Tours Southwestern Vermont Medical Center

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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Congressman Welch later spoke at Bennington's Town Meeting and spoke at a class at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., on Tuesday.

BENNINGTON, Mass. — Green laser lines crisscrossed Dr. Matthew Vernon as he explained how Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center's linear accelerator uses precision targeting to treat cancer with radiation.

Where a typical radiation treatment takes 20 minutes or more, the oncologist said, "the machine can actually just rotate around the patient with the beam on and these stencils move in and out and shape the beam in real time so in one or two arcs we can treat the same thing in about four minutes."

"That's just remarkable," said U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., on Monday as hospital officials and staff clustered in "the vault," a room with 8-foot thick concrete walls and ceiling that contains the $4 million machine.

The shorter time in the machine has been critical for some patients who before would have had to hold themselves as still as possible for up to 20 minutes for radiation treatments, Vernon said.

"I've had patients that we've had to stop treatment or turn away because they really couldn't hold still for that long ... most people can handle three or four minutes of standing still."

Welch was in Bennington on Monday to tour some of the facilities at Southwestern Vermont Health Care and later met privately with hospital officials. He also held two town halls — at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester and at Elm Street Market — and addressed Town Meeting.

The congressman got a closeup of view of the linear accelerator, installed about a year ago, and a brief tour of the Centers for Living and Rehabilitation, also on the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center campus.

The center focuses on short-term rehabilitation — getting people back into their homes, said Suzanne Anair, the rehab center's administrator. Out of 616 patients last year, the center discharged about 560 after an average stay of about 24 days.

"Those were all patients that go back into the community," she said. "I think we're No. 1 in the state for short-term rehab."

Anair believes the center's high rating is because of its ability to offer services seven days a week and have a full complement of rehabilitation staff.

The nursing center has about 100 patients and 175 full- and part-time employees, which can increase depending on the census. Many of the patients for short-term rehab come in for hip or knee replacements or issues related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. About half the patients are on Medicaid and a third on Medicare for short-term rehab.

"We try to get the residents home," said Thomas Dee, president and CEO of Southwestern. "The idea is that it's no longer living your whole life in a hospital or in long-term care."


State Rep. Mary Morrissey, R-Bennington, who accompanied the tour, said she was personally familiar with the capabilities of the rehab center.

"I've had the opportunity to, for probably three months, to be here on an almost daily basis with several friends and neighbors," she said. "I hate using the term facility. It's a home."

But Anair said it's difficult to find nurses.

"There's a nursing shortage in the state and across the country. It's a challenge," she said.

Dee said the company has been named among the best employers in Vermont for three years in a row. Still, "finding nurses is getting tougher and tougher," he said, "and long-term care is a tough deal."

Welch was specifically there to hear about the center's new "music and memory" program that is experimenting with using music in place of psychotropic drugs.

"Rather than giving them medication, we give them iPods with music that they like and it's pretty amazing to see people just de-escalate once they hear the music," Anair said.

The patients are usually having dementia-associated behaviors — aggressiveness toward other people, not sleeping, pacing, exhaustion etc. But the downside is that medications can have severe side effects and shorten lifespans.

"We would like to work with the state to create some services here that aren't anywhere else in the state,  especially focusing on behavioral services, dementia-related, there's a huge need," Dee said. "If we can create a little niche service here we can end up being a magnet for communities all around to send their residents here."

The health care system is really a tri-state system at this point, he explained, because it's pulling about a third of its patients from New York State and drawing more and more from Massachusetts since the closure of North Adams (Mass.) Regional Hospital two years ago.

SVHC is in the process of "absorbing" an 80-bed nursing home in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., that has good quality care but is suffering from financial challenges. Dee said New York State regulators are reviewing that now. The medical center also has a new team of orthopedic doctors, some previously associated with NARH, and opened a health-care center in Pownal near the Massachusetts border.

Dee said the health care system is servicing a population of about 80,000.

"Health care knows no borders," he said.


Tags: congressman,   SVMC,   welch,   

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