Merced's new Mercy Medical Center will have technological advances over old facility

When Mercy Medical Center opens its new hospital in May, the hospital will offer more than larger patient rooms and a pleasing layout.

The hospital will also feature the newest in technology.

Dr. Mani Nallasivan, a Merced cardiologist, was getting his first look at the 185-bed hospital Thursday morning.

"We will have a lot more capability and better equipment," Nallasivan said. "This is really exciting for us."

Mercy is planning to open the new hospital, located on North G Street, in early May. The facility will take the place of the current 174-bed hospital on 13th Street.

Most of the construction on the hospital is done, and equipment, beds and computers are being moved in and set up now.

From a cardiac catheterization lab that is four times bigger than the one in use now to super-fast computerized tomography (CT) scan machines, Mercy is bringing in cutting-edge gear for patient care.

Ray Navarro, director of imaging at Mercy, said the new CT scan machine is a 64-slice, or cross-sectional image, machine, compared to the four-slice scanner now in use at the 13th Street hospital.

"The new scanners will be much faster, and the dose of radiation to the patient will be lower and much safer," Navarro said.

Nallasivan said the faster CT scanners will allow cardiologists to use the CT machines to do a lot of what now is done in the catheterization lab.

"Using the CT scanners will save time, and there will be no danger to the patient," Nallasivan said.

The new scanner can take X-rays in milliseconds, Nallasivan said, and show the heart and other parts of the body in better images than are now available at the hospital.

When a patient has a cardiac catheterization, a wire is put into an artery and threaded through the body to the heart. The CT machines will use X-rays to give cardiologists a three-dimensional look at the patient's heart.

"It's geared to give physicians the best view of the heart possible," Nallasivan said.

Every patient room in the hospital will have a computer available in it, so nurses and physicians can access a patient's records easily and discuss results with the patient. In the intensive care unit, nurses at the nurses' station will be able to see all the patients in the unit.

"It's all geared to give the physicians the best technology, which makes patient care better," Nallasivan said.

Reporter Carol Reiter can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or creiter@mercedsun-star.com.