Hospital offers new services

Look no further than Mineral Community Hospital for your orthopedic surgery needs.

 With a new doctor on staff and a new surgery table, services are continuing to expand.

Last week, Steve Carty, hospital administrator, welcomed hospital staff and members from the community an open house to celebrate the reopening of the surgical suite and the addition of Dr. Alan Alyea.

“I was out skiing when I got a call from Holly Blaylock and she said, ‘you’ll never guess who walked into our clinic today,’” Carty recounted. “It was Dr. Alyea and he had mentioned he was an orthopedic surgeon who happened to have a home right here in county and would be interested in doing some work here. Long story short, it didn’t take me long to get a hold of him and bring him on board.”

Carty introduced Alyea to the group who said that he appreciated the party.

“It’s every week, right?” he joked.

Alyea trained at the University of Washington and did a residency in New Mexico for about six years in orthopedic training. After that, he spent some time in the Air Force on active Duty. He retired from the Air Force about 20 years ago and started a private practice in the Spokane area.

“I’m looking to slow down a bit,” he said, “so I can do more of the fun things. We built a little house out here and I like to hunt and fish. I thought I should give something back to the community if I’m going to be doing that.”

Alyea said that he enjoys the variety of orthopedics. The practice allows you to work on feet, ankles, shoulders, hands and more.

“I did general surgery in the service and it got kind of boring. I like being able to restore function to people and mobility. I like the challenge of taking someone who is broken and putting them back together again so they can be who they were before,” Alyea said.

Alyea expects he’ll be working one or two days a month. Last Monday, when the open house was held, he saw 17 patients, when on his first day back in February, he only saw three.

“That just shows how much of a need there is in the county for orthopedic surgery and practice,” Carty pointed out.

Alyea said that he is excited to be joining the team and has already met so many great people.

Of course, the operating needed to be brought up to speed as well. The Mineral County Medical Foundation was responsible for the brand new table. Nancy Myers, the surgery supervisor, and Jan Testa, surgery technician, took guests back to show the suite area.

Right inside the entrance are two rooms for processing instruments. There is also an area where the team gets into their sterile booties, masks, hair caps and gowns. In the core area, supplies are readily available. Testa pointed out that typically people aren’t just allowed back in the area, noting this was a onetime thing. Also, guests couldn’t enter the actual surgery room, but had to view it from a few feet back outside the doorway as it needs to be kept sterile. Guests were fine with that, joking they’d prefer not to have to see it up close.

“We’re really excited,” Myers said. “It was great that the foundation enabled us to buy this brand new table.”

The table is able to go into different positions depending on what’s being worked on and allows x-ray pictures to be taken if needed for when the surgeon might be pinning something.

Myers said that after Dr. Park retired surgeries performed at the hospital declined as well.

“We have some surgeons that have come from Missoula and Plains for minor things, but we’re looking forward to getting things going again,” Myers said.

Carty said that the hospital continues to expand services so that they can serve as many people as possible in the county.

“We have a lot of stuff going to Missoula so the more specialties we can bring in, the more we are able to keep our patients in the county,” Carty said. “We want to provide the highest quality care across the board for patients.”

Carty said that expanding services is also essential to maintaining the viability of a small facility.

“If we can do more, we can help the viability of the hospital,” he said.

Carty said that he feels that holding open houses, something that the hospital does frequently, is important.

“We want to let the community see what we’re doing and to see that we do offer good, quality care here and that we have nice equipment back there,” Carty said.