CHI Health Good Samaritan Hospital receives new operating room

KEARNEY, Neb. (KSNB) – Hospital equipment can be expensive and CHI Health Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney has been looking for upgrades to their cardiovascular equipment for the last few years. Thanks to a $2.4 million donation, the hospital can now open up a whole new operating room.

Typically the wait times for procedures could take days from diagnosis to entering the operating room. However, with the new hybrid cardiovascular operating room, it can all happen in one day.

The room had its first patient back on May 23rd, and it combines the traditional functions of a cardiac catheterization lab with surgical functions that are only in an operating room. This means doctors can effectively diagnose, then transition to minimally invasive or open surgeries.

Patients are exposed less to anesthesia and radiation with the imaging as well. Vascular Surgeon Dr. Franz Murphy says this benefits the staff and patients.

“This is state-of-the-art equipment,” Dr. Murphy said. “The imagery quality is much higher than it has been in the past, so it just allows us to do more for patients, you know more advanced procedures, more technically difficult procedures. It really does help push for the abilities to be able to help patients here,”

After working at the hospital for nine years, Dr. Murphy says it was time to bring in some new equipment.

“The equipment we had before was pretty old,” Dr. Murphy “I think it was actually at 13 years, which in medical terms is a long time. It is just leaps and bounds (better) basically.”

The 1,167 square-foot lab doubles the size of the other cardiac labs and features monitor displays, vascular ultrasounds and a designated anesthesia work area.

Since first arriving, Dr. Murphy says this is something the hospital needed, and the donation became a solution to the problem.

“From day one I said this is something we need to do,” Dr. Murphy said. “It is a costly venture. I think the last two years or so is when we really got the funding, we got an anonymous donor that really helped us out with that. The last two years is where we really made a big push for it.”

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