New Walk-through CT Scanners at Hospital Entrances!
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New Walk-through CT Scanners at Hospital Entrances!
Hospital Woeisme has finished updating its entrances, with the completed doors more closely resembling something from the new Star Wars movie than a hospital entrance. Each metal entryway features a short, tunneled pathway, wide enough for one person to walk through at a time. In addition to the usual feature of allowing for ingress and egress of a structure, these doors have something extra: they are all CT scanners.
These vertical, walk-though scanners expedite the door-to-treatment times of a variety of conditions, from appendicitis to bowel obstruction to constipation. The scanners appear similar to the ones seen at airports, where it only takes a few seconds to image each individual. New technology allows the scan to take place while the patient is walking through the entry tunnel.
Radiology resident Dr. Exner expressed amazement at this new innovation. “It’s really timesaving – by the time a person has reached the main lobby, they have had a full-body scan! I can provide reads to the emergency department almost as fast as registration can check-in the patient.”
An additional horizontal scanner has been installed in the ambulance bay at the entrance to the emergency department. EMS crews unloading their patients can slide the patient, still safely strapped to the gurney, through the scanner and straight into the resuscitation bay. By the time a resident signs up to see the patient, the whole body scan has been completed and uploaded to the patient chart. According to ED resident Dr. Benji, “Sure, it’s taken away a lot of the diagnostic mystery, but I can see so many more patients per shift now.” When discussing the new entryway scanners, Trauma surgery attending Dr. Disaster raved, “Head bleed? Liver lac? Rib fractures? You got it, our ambubay scanner will find it!”
Instead of the age-old process whereby a patient speaks with a physician, and the physician chooses which tests, if any, are necessary, these new CT doors flip that paradigm on its head. The imaging comes first – the conversation after. According to would-be patient Ms. Googlers, “Well, I didn’t really want to talk to a doctor, but I still wanted to be sure there was nothing wrong with me. I feel fine, but I read on the Internet that some serious illnesses can present with almost no symptoms, and I got scared. So I went to Hospital Woeisme, walked through the new doors, registered at the front desk, and then left. I figure that if something is actually wrong with me, someone will call. Why talk to a doctor if I don’t need to?” Apparently Ms. Googlers is not the only person to think this way. The hospital lobby is now frequently packed with people of a similar mindset, while the number of ED visits per day has dramatically decreased.
Physicians aren’t the only ones benefitting from the new doors. The hospital gift shop is enjoying an uptick in business, as so many people are now stopping by to get scanned. Security has also benefitted, as they can immediately confiscate any weapons that people try to sneak into the hospital.
CEO Dr. Koopa explained, “We’re really just responding to the needs and wants of the public. Folks in the community really seem to love this innovative method of providing medical care. Gone is the archaic practice of having to speak with a physician.” Due to the sweeping success of the new doors, many other hospitals are reportedly planning to update their entrances as well.
CT scanner entryways – coming soon to a hospital near you!
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