Carson City hospital: Adios, image angst

If you’re worried about your image, Carson Tahoe Health has you in mind when it comes to putting you at ease with mood-makeover options and medical technology upgrades.

The health care firm held an open house Tuesday featuring what it calls the state’s first patient-centered “caring suite,” replete with mood lighting of choice, a big screen television on the ceiling that can put up virtually any option available, at the same time showing off a GE 3T MRI (MR750w) which can record needed body imaging. The suite features, among other things, a wide bore, oversized scanning platform for patients.

“Basically,” said Jason Cerniglia, an MRI technician, ”it makes them a little bit more comfortable.”

He said there are iPads that can be used to choose various themes — including lighting, music and visuals. He said in the suite is a 3 Tesla MRI that “helps create very detailed imagery.”

He said, by way of analogy, a device with less imaging capacity checking an Oreo cookie would show creme and the outer layer of cookie. The one being shown visitors at the open house in Eagle Medical Center, 2874 N. Carson St., gets down to sugar, flour and other components, as Cerniglia put it.

Background information from Carson Tahoe Health added: “This remarkable technology takes patients to a whole new level of comfort by appealing to the senses of sound, sight, and touch in a dynamic new way while offering less exposure to radiation and extraordinary results.”

The term Tesla, according to Cerniglia, refers to a unit of measurement named after Nikola Tesla rather than to Tesla Motors, the car making company also named after that early pioneer of electricity and technology.

The wide bore and oversized scanning platform, the health care firm said, “provides the opportunity for head-first or feet-first entry, and is equipped with next generation ‘silent-scan’ technology for added comfort and relaxation for the patient.”

The open house was designed to feature the caring suite and just one of several patient-centered medical imaging upgrades. Also listed among the upgrades were a GE 1.5 Tesla MRI, and a GE 128-slice LightSpeed CT, LOGIQ E9 Smart Technology ultrasound. The firm said the open house was to celebrate completion of a system-wide imaging upgrade. It was at Great Basin Imaging on the North Carson City medical center’s first floor.