New clinic to open in Nixa

St. John’s Health System plans to build a three-story, 60,000-square-foot clinic on an 18-acre tract of land in west Nixa near Espy Elementary School. The facility will house a variety of specialties to serve the residents of Christian County.
"It is important for St. John's Clinic to expand services in Christian County because the county is one of the fastest-growing parts of our region," says Donn Sorensen, senior vice president and chief operating officer for St. John's Clinic.
"The clinic will offer such services as primary care, including internal medicine, family practice and pediatrics; as well as OB/GYN and other select specialty services such as urgent care, imaging and lab services. The new clinic will also house a pharmacy."
St. John's already has a strong presence in Christian County. St. John’s Clinic – Pediatrics & Family Medicine – Nixa, located at 202 West Street in Nixa, added two pediatricians and expanded by more than 4,000 square feet in August 2001. St. John's Clinic – Ozark opened in 1980 as a branch office of Smith-Glynn-Callaway Clinic and employs four physicians.
In April 2002, St. John’s Fitness Centers opened a location center in the Nixa Community & Aquatics Center at 701 N. Taylor Way. Members of the fitness center’s Springfield location have privileges at the Nixa facility and vice versa. The Nixa clinic project is part of
St. John's Master Sites and Facilities Plan.


St. John’s urology services named 1 of top 50 in U.S.

U.S. News & World Report magazine named St. John's as one of the country's top 50 urology centers for the third time by U.S. News & World Report magazine. Editors assessed patient medical data, technology, nursing care, American Hospital Association surveys, death rates and national reputation among physicians and specialists.
St. John's urology services include St. John's Clinic urologists Jeffrey R. Johnson, M.D.; Robert Johnson, M.D.; Geoff Lloyd-Smith, M.D. and Mark Walterskirchen, M.D.; and a team of health care providers inside St. John's Regional Health Center. St. John’s urology services made the list in 1997, 2002 and 2003. The ranking can be found on page 114 of the 2003 installment of the magazine’s “America's Best Hospitals” report.
The physicians of St. John's Clinic - Urology (formerly known as Urology Surgical Associates) have long been regional leaders in the treatment of enlarged prostates and prostate cancer, kidney stones and kidney cancer, among other urological disorders.
In September 2001, Walterskirchen performed one of the area's first laparoscopic kidney removals and is the only physician in Springfield and one of only a few in the state of Missouri to use cryoblation to treat kidney cancer by freezing the cancerous cells.


Hospital recognized for respiratory care

St. John's Regional Health Center has been named a Quality Respiratory Care Provider by the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC) as part of a program started earlier this year to help consumers make informed choices about their health care and to make sure that patients have access to respiratory care services provided by qualified respiratory therapists.
Respiratory therapists are specially trained health care professionals who work under physicians' orders to provide a wide range of breathing treatments and other services for people with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, AIDS, and other lung or lung-related conditions. They also care for premature infants and are key members of lifesaving response teams charged with handling medical emergencies.
St. John's neonatologist Melinda Slack, M.D., agrees that quality respiratory care and the expertise of respiratory therapists are vital, especially with the premature infants that she works with.
"We have the single most fragile patient population in the hospital," she says. "It is crucial that the respiratory care is provided in a meticulous way for these premature infants because their lungs are not fully developed, and
St. John's respiratory therapists do a wonderful job with them."
The hospital was one of only 500 hospitals in the nation that met the requirements to be named a Quality Respiratory Care Provider. Hospitals recognized under the program ensure patient safety by agreeing to adhere to a strict set of criteria governing their respiratory care services.


Rolla physicians join St. John’s Clinic

St. John’s Ozarks Health Services, a Rolla-based medical group comprised of 41 physicians with clinics in Rolla, St. Robert, Steelville, St. James, Cuba and Salem, has officially joined St. John’s Clinic.


St. John’s EMS awarded for pre-hospital program

The Missouri Emergency Medical Services Association has awarded St. John’s Emergency Medical Services a quality improvement award for its prehospital acute myocardial infarction program. The program’s goal is to improve the time to treatment for rural heart attack patients, thereby reducing myocardial injury (damage to the heart).
Components of the award-winning program include ambulance monitors with multi-lead capabilities that can transmit EKGs to the hospital before the patient arrives; a new generation of thrombolytics, which are clot-destroying medicines that markedly reduce the death rate of heart attack patients; and infusion pumps that allow medication to be delivered in a more controlled fashion.
“This program is of greatest benefit to the rural communities,” says St. John’s EMS Director Bob Patterson. “We are now able to treat the patient before they even reach the hospital.”
According to the latest information released by the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction, the national time-to-treatment average is 36 minutes after the patient’s arrival to the hospital. St. John’s time-to-treatment average is 42 minutes prior to the patient’s arrival to the hospital.