Medical Alert
Campaign to tout Southside's health services
Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Julie Bryant
A Jonesboro physician group has launched a campaign to keep patients in their own backyards. Dr. Marcus Polk of Riverdale Anesthesia Associates P.C. is helping head up the campaign to make patients more aware of niche health-care programs that exist in Atlanta's Southern Crescent, particularly services for children.
"We're basically trying to get the word out that Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is not the only one out there serving children," Polk said.
Population growth in the region, which skirts parts of Clayton, Henry, Coweta, Fayette and Fulton counties, has jumped over the last five years, spurring greater health-care demands.
Residents have gotten the idea that they need to travel outside of the Southern Crescent for good health care, Polk said. The exodus is not only bad for business, it's unnecessary, he said. Polk leads the Pediatric Anesthesia Program at Southern Regional Medical Center. The program is the only one like it in the Southern Crescent and is being developed as a potentially lucrative niche service for the hospital.
As the financial climate for hospitals tightens, health-care leaders say developing niche services such as a pediatric anesthesia program will be essential to a hospital's survival.
Now Polk wants patients to know the program is there.
The pediatric anesthesia program is housed in two "kid-friendly" suites inside the hospital. As part of the program, one parent is allowed to accompany a child into the operating room and a specialty pediatric nurse is on hand. Several anesthesia techniques also are used to maximize pain control, some of which are not available in most hospitals, Polk said.
The program offers some of the most cutting-edge techniques, and parents need go no further than their own backyard, he emphasized.
Invention Hatchery. Hatch Medical LLC has hatched its medical device incubator for physician entrepreneurs.
The company, run by former medical device marketer Paul Gianneschi, has opened up shop in Snellville. Gianneschi offers his expertise to doctors with "great ideas, but limited knowledge on how to pursue them."
Hatch signs a risk-share agreement with doctors and takes a cut of the royalties on devices that make it to market. The company actually started out as the thesis for completing an MBA degree, Gianneschi said. Working for a medical device company, he was constantly fielding calls from doctors who wanted to develop and market their inventions. After pursuing venture capital funds, Gianneschi gathered up some private financing and launched Hatch Medical out of his home in March.
Hatch basically provides project leadership through a network of partners which include patent attorneys, biomedical engineers, which can help develop the product, and medical device manufacturers.
Most manufacturers are willing to help along a product that has already been built and proven, but seldom have time to coax it through the initial development stages, Gianneschi explained. Typically, incubators will pay a physician for his idea, and the doctor gets a cut of the royalties if the product makes it to market. Hatch works in the reverse, assuming the risk to help a doctor get a product on the shelf. So far, Hatch has two full-time employees and four physician advisors in addition to a network of partners. The company currently is developing three main products: a catheter device, surgical guidewire accessories and vascular snares, which help surgeons keep track of loose materials during surgery.
Housing Expansion. Another Gainesville senior housing facility may be expanding. Owners of Autumn Breeze Personal Care Home Inc. have filed for state permission to add 20 beds to the existing 55-bed facility. The beds would be part of a $1 million, 8,000-square-foot expansion of the facility's Alzheimer's and assisted-living wings. Company president Steven Dye said the expansion is part of the original five-year plan for the center, which was built three years ago. If the state certificate of need application is approved, construction could near completion by spring of next year, he said.
ACE awards. WEB ( Worldwide Employee Benefits Network) Atlanta is accepting nominations for the ACE (Achievement of Corporate Excellence) in Benefits Award. The ACE award recognizes the achievements of benefits professionals, including those that initiate change and the companies that encourage and support them. Examples of award-winning achievements include developing a strategy that reduces turnover in the workplace. Nominees must be submitted by Oct. 31. For more information contact Laurie B. Kiernicki at (404) 256-5045.
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