UO Magazine > Nov/Dec 2006 > Norfolk, Virginia Cont.

The progressive spirit hasn’t bypassed Norfolk hospitals or those in neighboring cities, either.

Norfolk’s three major health-care centers have all taken giant steps in adapting new technology to their services and taking patient care to new levels. So have two other large hospitals in the Hampton Roads area—Chesapeake General Hospital in Chesapeake and Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News.

By early September, Riverside neurosurgeons had performed 35 brain tumor treatments using the hospital’s new Gamma knife technique, one of only ten in the country. Besides using it for prostatectomies, surgeons are starting to incorporate a Da Vinci robot into gynecological cases, and by year’s end they expect to add a radiosurgery technique, Synergy S, to treat tumors in the spine and other areas of the body. Ambulances are equipped with technology to perform EKGs and transmit results by cell phone to waiting emergency room physicians at the area’s only level II trauma center.

The hospital also has opened a freestanding cancer center for “beginning-to-end” patient treatments.

Even Riverside’s nursing school, founded along with the hospital in 1915, has swung into 21st-century mode with a new name—Riverside School of Health Careers—and curricula for aides and practical nurses, plus sequences in surgical and radiological technology and a diploma program in nursing. Graduates (216 this year) easily feed into the Riverside family.

Christopher Mosley, Chesapeake’s president and CEO, was recently named one of the U.S.’ 25 top minority health-care executives by Modern Healthcare magazine. Under his tutelage, among other changes, a “patient navigator” now steers cancer patients through the many hoops and roadblocks on the road to recovery. Chesapeake will soon be America’s second hospital to install an IGRT linear accelerator offering the newest technology in image-guided radiation. Its BirthPlace incorporates almost every conceivable care-related component, including “boot camp” for dads, baby massage, and a MomsMobile providing home breastfeeding help. Its women’s component also includes everything from bone densitometry to an R2 ImageChecker system for earliest possible breast cancer detection.

A state-of-the-art Phillips cardiovascular x-ray system is linked to the American Heart Association’s library. Its catheterization archival system is a regional one-of-a-kind, as is its Geropsychiatric Unit, focusing heavily on services to Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

To counteract a 13-percent higher cardiac death rate than the rest of the state, local hospitals have been intensifying heart-care services. Exhibit A: Auteri, a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, who was cold to the idea at first when Craig Smith, MD, former President Bill Clinton’s cardiac surgeon, asked him to become the director of the new Heart Institute of Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth. “In Scottsdale it was 75 degrees and February and the sun was shining. I said, ‘No, thank you. How are the wife and kids? Goodbye,’” he recalls.

“Then I thought it over and called him back. It was a wonderful opportunity to be in on the ground floor” at a new facility. And, he admits, “It was a little bit selfish. The ability to start a program from scratch is kind of fun—and rewarding. I’ve taken care of a lot of patients who might not have otherwise been served,” since moving to the area a year ago.

The clincher was Bon Secours’ tie-in with New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, where Smith operated on Clinton and Auteri trained as a surgical fellow. He and other Bon Secours cardiac physicians hold teaching positions at Columbia. “This allows us to recruit a higher level of physicians, compare notes with top surgeons and avoid mistakes made by others in the past,” he points out. “We can piggyback on Columbia’s proven track record of excellent results.” Columbia surgeons helped on site with the first surgeries at the Heart Institute, and Bon Secours physicians and nurses received specialized training at Columbia-Presbyterian.

Going from door to door, eight nuns began treating Norfolk victims of a catastrophic yellow fever outbreak in 1855. Soon a wealthy patron offered her home as a hospital, the beginning of the institution that’s now one of 17 operated by the Sisters of Bon Secours (French for “good help”). Five are in Hampton Roads, including a special Center for Colon and Rectal Disease in Suffolk with comprehensive care, innovative technology, and minimally invasive procedures.

A 150th anniversary celebration at Bon Secours last year included commissioning a children’s story, “The Mermaids and Yellow Jack—A NorFolk Tale,” by local author Lisa Suhay. The story tells of mermaids from France who swam to Virginia shores during the epidemic (once known as yellow jack) and sprouted legs so they could care for the sick. Today, a mermaid is the symbol of the city, and many beds of yellow flowers are


	NORFOLK BY THE NUMBERS: POPULATION: Norfolk: 237,908 Hampton Roads Region: 1.6 million CLIMATE: Avg Annual Rainfall: 45 inches Avg Snowfall: 8 inches Avg High/Low Temperatures: January: 48/32, July: 89/66 Days of Sunshine: 212 TRANSPORTATION: AIRPORTS: Norfolk International Airport, Newport News/ Williamsburg International Airport BUS: Greyhound TRAIN: AMTRAK (Newport News & Williamsburg) INTERSTATES: I-64 COST OF LIVING INDEX: 106.2 (100 is average) AVG HOUSEHOLD INCOME: Norfolk, $42,342 Hampton Roads, $57,492 AVERAGE HOME PRICE: Norfolk, $124,812 SALES TAX: 5 percent

reminders of the once-dreadful scourge.

Meanwhile, FitzHarris says, “Sentara has definitely seen what the future is going to look like and implemented its design and equipment accordingly.” Eight “smart” ORs, which listen and respond to doctors’ voice commands, are set up at Sentara CarePlex for high-definition laparoscopic procedures, with ceiling-mounted monitors and towers to optimize efficiency and ergonomics.

The Sentara network incorporates two hospitals in Norfolk, plus facilities in Virginia Beach, Hampton, Suffolk, and Williamsburg. An adjunct, six-story Heart Hospital in Norfolk offers premier heart care, with many area firsts, including minimally invasive heart surgery. It’s currently the region’s sole solid organ transplant center.

Sentara’s innovations include the Da Vinci Surgical System and the eICU, an electronic monitoring system developed by VISICU. Since 2000, according to hospital statistics, the around-the-clock eye on ICU patients has helped save more than 430 lives, reducing mortality by 25 percent and lengths of stay by 17 percent. The system keeps its eyes on 103 beds in 11 ICUs while intensivists and critical care nurses monitor the beds from an off-site command center. According to Rodney F. Hochman, MD, the hospital’s executive vice president, “Around-the-clock reaction time has become a matter of seconds.”

Sentara introduced an elaborate, all-encompassing safety system in 2002. In this new regimen, no employee is left behind. Everyone is a team member and a “wingman,” or backstop, helping fellow workers to avoid mistakes, whether they involve maintenance, housekeeping, bedside care, or surgical procedures. Shannon Sayles, RN, the director of the safety initiative, says, “From 2002 to 2005, the error event rate decreased by more than 46 percent.”

Adding to patient care improvement, a physician communication concierge now coordinates physician care for patients with multiple problems, as well as speeding up message delivery among doctors.

From neonatal intensive care units to the area’s only pediatric surgical facility, which includes heart and reconstructive work, Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters covers the gamut of services to youth as the sole independent, freestanding, not-for-profit pediatric institution within a 125-mile radius.

CHKD dates to 1896 when the Methodist-related group hired a visiting nurse who biked to homes of poor families. Services evolved to a private home, health stations, and finally in 1961, Virginia’s first dedicated pediatric hospital.

Today, with 440 physicians on staff plus independent practitioners, CHKD covers most specialties, but its secret weapon is the pectus excavatum surgery devised by South African “refugee” Donald Nuss, MD. Even though his German missionary forebears gave him roots dating to 1856, Nuss’ anti-apartheid activities angered the government, inspiring him to immigrate to America in 1976. For a non-citizen physician, the going was hard—until a Norfolk doctor hired him. The two became prime movers in advocating for operating rooms at CHKD. Their campaign finally succeeded with the opening of the Surgery Center and eight ORs.

It was after that when Nuss devised the procedure, now named for him, which draws patients from around the world who are afflicted with “sunken chest,” a concave breastbone that greatly compresses the heart and lungs. Nuss’ one-hour procedure replaces drastic four-hour surgery involving removing ribs and cartilage and cracking the sternum. Now a flexible bar is inserted beneath ribs and sternum, flipped, and held in place until the bones are reconfigured.

Surgeons Kuhn and Obermeyer are among beneficiaries of Nuss’ OR lobbying—and the size of the service area. “The population is large enough and varied enough that we see a good amount of pathology,” says Kuhn. “There’s not one of my partners who feels bored.” Since arriving, she’s encountered such seldom-seen cases as a tracheoesophageal fistula and “odd hernias that don’t fit the categories they should.”

Obermeyer’s family time is important to him, making a large surgical staff a boon. His take on it: “You have to consider how often you want to be on call. In a small town it’s every single night because it doesn’t have the population to support more than one pediatric surgeon. At CHKD, five are on staff full time.” And, he added, “I like the fact that CHKD isn’t grafted onto a larger hospital.”

Over time, Norfolk residents have managed to mix and match history and contemporary development, although the “new” was sometimes a hard sell to preservationists. The Cannonball Trail highlights some of the city’s major historic events via a walking tour featuring both old and recent landmarks. A handsome guide booklet pinpoints 40 buildings, sculptures, and memorials. A cannonball embedded in St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral testifies to its Revolutionary War “purple heart” status. It was the only building to survive an English bombardment. The Moses Myers House is America’s sole historic house interpreting traditions of early Jewish immigrants, and the tombs of the great warrior and his wife are part of the General Douglas MacArthur Memorial. African American historical tours of Hampton Roads reflect the considerable contributions of area black leaders, and include a statue of William Carney, a Norfolk native and the first black recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Despite vulnerability to attack, two major military victories were achieved in the Hampton Roads area. With a French fleet blocking a retreat route, the British finally surrendered at Yorktown, paving the way for American Independence. And federal forces won the day at the famous Civil War clash of America’s first ironclad warships, the Monitor and the Merrimac. Today’s tourists can look down on the site from a bluff at Newport News—and recall the battle as they travel the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel—just one example of how Norfolk residents’ modern-day lives intersect with landmarks spanning our nation’s history.