The Medical Center Albany has been striving to make patient care better for those in Clinton County.

Offering new services within the walls of the hospital including bringing in more specialist, offering more surgery options and now offering the ability to provide nuclear medicine has vastly improved the care provided to the patients of Albany and Clinton County.

Hospital Administrator Laura Belcher, as well as Nuclear Medicine Technician Kimberly Williamson are in full swing serving patients at The Medical Center-Albany with the new available tests.

Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that is used to diagnose and treat disease in a safe and painless manner. It can identify abnormalities very early in the progression of a disease long before medical problems arise in a patient.

According to Williamson, nuclear medicine allows doctors to view certain organs from all aspects.

“It creates a 3D image of the organ or bones,” Williamson explained. “In the old days, doctors used to go in and do biopsies. They way nuclear medicine is different versus x-ray is we look at how those organs are functioning.”

Some of the tests now available at The Medical Center-Albany include, nuclear stress test, MUGA scans, bone scans, HIDA scans, gastric emptying studies, lung scans, liver/spleen studies, viability studies, GI bleed scans, and hemangloma scans.

“With the cardiac stress test, if they have had a heart attack in the past or stents, if they come into the ER for chest pains or tightness, we can do what we call the nuclear stress test,” Williamson said. “What that does is it will find where that defect in the heart is. They will either walk on a treadmill or we can give them a pharmaceutical to stress their heart. When you attach it with nuclear, the doctors get pictures of the heart pumping.”

Williamson said most people only have problems when they exercise or they exert themselves.

“Something all of a sudden will get them, so when you attach nuclear to the stress test, it lets the doctors know how bad it is, how much their heart is pumping and so on. That lets them know when they go in for surgery what exactly is needed,” Williamson said. “It helps to prevent patients from going into surgery that may not need it. Those pictures will give the doctors a 3D image of the heart and they are pretty detailed.”

The Nuclear Medicine Technologist, who runs the nuclear medicine program, Denise Copas, has moved back to Albany and has worked with the Med Center for several years according to Belcher.

One of the highlights of having nuclear medicine in Albany is keeping patients from traveling great distances to have these tests done.

“Before, patients had to travel at least an hour,” Williamson said. “This will definitely keep you from having to travel.”

“It’s a lengthy test procedure, so it is really a full day especially if they have to travel,” Belcher added.

Radiologist and cardiologist will be reading the scans and according to Belcher, the cardiologist doesn’t have to be on site for them to read the scans.

“We can send the scans to the doctors and they should be read by the end of the day,” Williamson said. “The primary physician or a specialist will write the order. It’s not too hard to get in. There is usually no wait time to be put on the schedule. We are here every Wednesday and Friday and we will put as many as we can on the schedule, so people will not be waiting.”

All these tests are outpatient tests, so being admitted to the hospital isn’t required to complete the scans.

“The community needs to know it’s here, so they don’t travel,” Williamson said. “There is not really any need for them to have to travel hours away to get the same scan done.”

Being able to provide better local healthcare in Albany is the goal for the Med Center and with the addition of nuclear medicine, it will surely offer more to the citizens of Albany and Clinton County.

“Anything we can offer at our facility to keep people from traveling, it is our intent to keep healthcare local when at all possible,” Belcher said.