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Ernest H. Wood Distinguished Professor of Radiology
UNC Department of Radiology Chair

Nowadays, the term “footprint” is used in a range of contexts. Having a carbon footprint has filtered into mainstream discussion. Business expansion can establish a footprint in a competitive marketplace. In recent years, significant growth in comprehensive imaging services across central North Carolina has given UNC’s Department of Radiology a regional footprint. Such an imaging reach beyond UNC’s 65-year-old cornerstone School of Medicine (SOM) campus in Chapel Hill supports both the Department’s ongoing aims in expansion and those of UNC Health Care.  

When the $200 million+ UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Hospital (UNCH HBH) opened in July 2015, it decompressed UNCH’s Chapel Hill location through introducing a second regional campus. The opening marked not only UNC Health Care’s largest expansion of patient care space to date; it further grew the limited ambulatory care already being offered at the Hillsborough campus, including imaging services.

The Department had been one of only six SOM units offering outpatient services at Hillsborough’s three-floor Medical Office Building (MOB). Mammography (screening and diagnostic) and breast ultrasound were amongst the MOB’s comprehensive cancer care services. Bone density testing (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry) was invaluable to Hillsborough campus patient services prior to UNCH HBH.

After UNCH HBH opened, our imaging services became a prominent presence within it. Through the entrance, the Department’s patient care suites are the first ones encountered.  In designing the flow of UNCH HBH’s ambulatory care, UNC Health Care positioned imaging services prominently on UNCH HBH’s main floor. Beyond direct patient care, our imaging services are also integral to many in-hospital referrals.  Inside our UNCH HBH suites, Abdominal, Musculoskeletal and Breast Imaging faculty provide inpatient consult and procedural care.

In April 2017, the Department introduced limited Interventional Radiology (IR) services out of an OR suite to UNCH HBH patients. These services include central venous access, thoracentesis, paracentesis and several types of drains. UNCH HBH’s wealth of specialty-specific services also enables our IR division to collaborate with UNC’s Department of Urology to perform lithotripsy several times monthly.

Once an under-construction, dedicated procedural suite is completed late 2017, procedure days will increase from 2x-monthly to three days a week in January 2018.  By the end of next year, we project offering IR procedural care 5 days a week. Longer-term, we anticipate completion in FY’19 of a full-service IR suite adjacent to the procedural room. It will round out the needed infrastructure to offer more complex procedures and accommodate the growing IR case volume at UNCH HBH.

Growing our presence beyond UNC Medical Center (UNCMC) in Chapel Hill is one way we are meeting regional patient care needs. Adding new technology at our main hospital campus, however, is equally imperative to sustaining top-tier imaging care for UNC Health Care patients. In May, we added a Siemens 1.5 Tesla MAGNETOM Aera to the MR imaging suites at UNCMC’s Scatliff Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center. This expansion provides quicker, same-day access to MR services for UNCMC patients receiving referrals from other specialties. The recent addition of MR technology at UNCMC not only preserves the superior MR imaging care that many UNC Health Care patients still rely upon at our Chapel Hill campus. It also reinforces the Department’s firm footing in MR services across the region at UNCH HBH, UNC Hospitals Imaging and Spine Center, and UNC Hospitals Burlington Imaging and Breast Center.

As one of multiple SOM units providing “outreach” to those within UNC Health Care’s network and beyond, the Department also makes a difference for those conducting their clinical work flow (eg, new patient registration, scheduling) without a direct link to UNCMC’s information systems. In September, the Department’s Outreach team entered into a contractual relationship with UNC Physicians Network to streamline its integration into UNC Health Care’s interpretation processes.   Through serving as a focused point of contact, we are facilitating the transition through educating UNC Physicians Network facilities on operational procedures and helping them uphold image quality standards.  By providing a unified patient study timeline — regardless of imaging location, comprehensive image archival and integration with Epic@UNC — it is our goal to help improve imaging efficiencies across UNC Health Care’s facilities.

In 1952, the State of North Carolina opened the doors of North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill to offer citizens statewide access to top-tier patient care, technology and health information systems. In the six+ decades since, UNC’s Department of Radiology has proudly joined other SOM units in supporting UNC Health Care’s ever-growing network of ambulatory and hospital affiliates. The prominent role our Radiology occupies within the UNC Health Care System Imaging Consortium further expands our sphere of influence and strengthens our imaging services footprint.