From left to right:
Front row: Matthew Lane, Council Member PBG, Howard Brown, CFO, Dr. Chin Chen, Anesthesiologist, Dorilee Kuhns, OR Director, Teresa Urquhart, CEO, Rochelle Litt, Vice Mayor PBG, Dr. Baqir Syed, Chairman of Board, Dr. Hayder Al-Azzawi, General Surgeon, Carl Woods, Council Member PBG.
Back row: Tammy Razmic, COO, Dr. Jose R. DeOlazabal, Jennifer Basso-Kestner, OR manager, Denise Kvapil, CNO, Tim Howard, CHRO, Mike Mitrione, Board Member, Dr. Eliah Watlington, Board Member, Noel Martinez, President/CEO Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce
October 31 2019 – Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center recently completed its multi-million dollar OR expansion project, and now has the ability to accommodate higher acuity, more complex cases in ortho, spine, general and robotic services. The hospital expanded and modernized its 4 new operating room suites, and expanded and redesigned its central sterile processing area, post-anesthesia recovery areas and ambulatory unit. This expansion gives everyone a positive and cohesive experience when coming to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center for surgical services. Patients and families will now get to see their anesthesia provider and surgeon together prior to having their procedure and surgeons can now easily move between seeing their patients pre-operatively, doing surgery and finishing up in a new dictation area. An additional aspect of the event celebrated the arrival of the new da Vinci Xi Surgical System. The surgery system uses a small camera and instruments inserted through small incisions to perform minimally invasive surgery. While looking at a 3-D image of the surgical site, the surgeon controls the system with his or her movements translated as precise micro-movements. Some of the potential benefits of robotic surgery include:
•Less need for narcotic pain medicine
•Decrease in blood loss
•Fewer complications
•Shorter hospital stay and recovery time
•Better clinical outcomes
About Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center
Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center is a 199-bed acute care hospital serving the medical and healthcare needs of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast for over 50 years. The hospital was the first in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast to perform open-heart surgery and has since remained one of the area’s leading heart hospitals, having performed over 16,000 open-heart surgeries and more than 100,000 cardiac catheterizations to date.
The Heart & Vascular Institute at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center offers comprehensive cardiac care and advanced minimally invasive procedures including Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) and MitraClip. The hospital is the first in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin County to adopt the new minimally invasive convergent approach to treat patients with atrial fibrillation. Most recently, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center became the first hospital from Miami to Jacksonville to commercially utilize a fully dissolving heart stent in the treatment of coronary artery disease. Due to the outstanding work of the Heart & Vascular Institute, Palm Beach Gardens was the only hospital in Florida to receive all three Healthgrades® America’s Best Cardiac Specialty Awards in 2017 – America’s 50 Best Hospitals for Cardiac Surgery™, America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Coronary Intervention™, and America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Cardiac Care™. Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center also earned high marks for heart failure surgeries from U.S. News & World Report’s 2019-2020 best hospitals ranking for adult clinical specialties.
Additional services include orthopedics and joint replacement, a Certified Primary Stroke Center, diagnostic imaging, general and robotic surgery, an Epilepsy Program and 24-hour emergency care. Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center’s Emergency Department offers all private rooms and is equipped with technology to help increase patient comfort, reduce wait times and provide up-to-the-minute patient status, as well as immediate access to film-based radiological images, interpretations and related data. The hospital’s Epilepsy Program is the first of its kind in Palm Beach County to have a dedicated Epilepsy Monitoring Unit for patients in need of further assessment.
Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center has been recognized by The Joint Commission as a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures for four years in a row and by Healthgrades® as a Five-Star Recipient for the Treatment of Heart Failure for 10 consecutive years (2007-2016). The hospital was also the recipient of the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for three years in a row (2013-2015). Additionally, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center earned Chest Pain Center Accreditation from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care. For more information or for a complimentary physician referral, please call 561-625-5070 or visit www.pbgmc.com
