The Med Center Albany has been ramping up its game as far as health care is concerned by offering the latest and best the health care industry has to offer.

Laura Belcher, Vice President of the Medical Center Albany, said cardiac services at The hospital are more convenient and patient friendly than they ever have been with Dr. Avnish Tripathi on staff.

“He is with Western Kentucky Heart & Lung and he has been coming every Tuesday since last July. He has really established a good patient base. He has a very impressive background in training,” Belcher said.

Belcher said having Tripathi on staff at The Med Center Albany gives patients a reason to stay here.

“It keeps patients here,” Belcher said. “We have ramped up and have nuclear medical services, so we can do stress testing, echo and EEG here on site. The entire initial cardiac workup should be able to be done here locally, which I think is a great benefit for our community.”

With Tripathi being in Albany, Belcher said patients are able to come once a month or every two weeks and are able to make a plan for treatment a lot easier.

“We are very excited to have Dr. Tripathi with us,” Belcher said. “He sees approximately 30 plus patients every time he’s here.”

Belcher said one of the hard things about having Tripathi’s services is keeping the waiting room socially distanced.

“We have offered for people to wait in their car, but a lot of times they want to be physically here in the building,” Belcher said. “We have signs around the hospital that say ‘don’t use this seat for social distancing,’ and people have become more accustom to it now than they were in March. For the most part people have been good about it and most people are good about keeping their masks on in the facility.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Belcher and Tripathi both agree the hospital is doing everything it can to make the facility safe for those who enter the building.

“We are very active and I can’t see anything that has been missed,” Tripathi said.

Belcher said she believes most people are still scared to go to a healthcare facility to see doctors when it’s not for emergency reasons, but she was very certain The Med Center Albany is very safe and they do everything they can to ensure the safety of those coming to the hospital.

“We don’t want people to prolong their health care,” Belcher said. “We don’t want people to be scared or put off their care.”

If patients are worried about the coronavirus and don’t want to physically visit the hospital to see a doctor, Tripathi said they also are offering telehealth visits. Those visits are done through video conferencing.

“I’ve been doing a lot of these in between patients and a lot of those are follow-up type visits,” Tripathi said. “It’s good and I like that. I call them up and we discuss about them and I can send them whatever prescriptions I need to send them.”

Tripathi said he loves coming to a small town and practicing medicine. He enjoys his patients and the atmosphere and is very thankful for the opportunity.

“It’s been a fabulous experience for me,” Tripathi said. “As a cardiologist, you basically take care of the heart. Interventional Cardiology is basically where you train to do interventions. Not necessarily operations, but things like changing the valves in the hearts and putting in stents and also putting in stents in the legs to take care of blockages. Basically I’m a plumber of the heart.”

Tripathi said his role at The Med Center Albany is a general cardiologist, but he can do other things if it is what the patient needs.

“I think this community has a need,” Tripathi said. “Patients used to go to Lexington, Bowling Green, Somerset, but now we cater to patients from Burkesville and surrounding counties. They don’t have to travel if they have to have tests done. When you are working in a small town it becomes family.”

Tripathi said having AirEvac in Albany is a real plus for the community because it allows him to get patients out quickly if he needs to.

“We have done that several times where we decide if the patient can ride or can be flown,” Tripathi said. “It’s just another resource that I have.”

Tripathi said every Tuesday he holds his clinic and if there are any other patients he needs to see he can do it during that time.

“Every little thing counts,” Tripathi said. “Most patients don’t want to go anywhere, so we can provide the physical therapy and their family is near by. For older people that’s a big thing.”

Since Tripathi has been coming to Albany he has been able to help a lot of people and he sees the need for it in the small town.

“There are a lot of unmet needs which I have found during my one year of being here,” Tripathi said. “From the cardiovascular standpoint, people pay attention to some of the major things like heart attacks and things like that. A lot of time people are short of breath and feeling tired and other symptoms.”

Tripathi said a lot of those symptoms get misdiagnosed for other things like COPD. With his services now available in Clinton County, he has been able to find blockages and other related issues that have been the cause of symptoms in his patients.

“We’ve been treating people and they feel better,” Tripathi said. “Some of the things can be subtle, but if caught early can make a tremendous difference. One of the biggest things I’ve seen is a lot of people have blockages in their legs which basically cuts off circulation to the legs.”

Tripathi said he loves coming and visiting his patients and cares for his patients greatly.

“It is important to see my patients,” Tripathi said. “I think it’s a testament to me that I don’t do all tele-visits from home. I need to see my patients. Of the 33 or 34 patients I see, four of them are tele-visits. The others are aware of COVID, but yet still come to see me and sit by my side. That relationship is never going to go away.”