News Releases/What’s Happening

Maurice Community Care Clinic
The Maurice Community Care Clinic is now open at 207 Milton Road, Maurice LA. We offer services in Primary Care, Internal Medicine, Nephrology, Psychiatry, and Obstetrical and Gynecological Care. We offer assistance to patients who are struggling to pay their medication or to the uninsured to give the access to medical care at a sliding fee discounted rate. Call for an appointment today at 337-898-9449. Walk ins are welcome.

Abbeville General Hospital Clinic
The Abbeville General Hospital Clinic is located at 2419 Alonzo Street, Abbeville, LA. We offer services in Primary Care, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Psychiatric Care. We offer assistance to patients who are struggling to pay their medication or to the uninsured to give them access to medical care at a sliding fee discounted rate. Call for an appointment today at 337-892-0630. The Women’s Health of Vermilion is a division of the Abbeville General Hospital offering Obstetrical and Gynecological services to teens and adult women. You may call for an appointment at 337-893-6294.

Quality TEST
Abbeville General Hospital earned Quality Respiratory Care Recognition (QRCR) under a national program aimed at helping patients and families make informed decisions about the quality of the respiratory care services available in hospitals. About 50 hospitals or approximately 10% of hospitals in the United States have applied for and received this award. Abbeville General Hospital has received this award each year since 2003.

To qualify for the recognition, Abbeville General Hospital provided documentation showing it meets the following conditions:

• All respiratory therapists employed by AGH to deliver bedside respiratory care services are either legally recognized by the state as competent to provide respiratory care services or hold the CRT or RRT credential.
• Respiratory therapists are available 24 hours.
• Other personnel qualified to perform specific respiratory procedures and the amount of supervision required for personnel to carry out specific procedures must be designated in writing.
• A doctor of medicine or osteopathy is designated as medical director of respiratory care services.

Respiratory Therapists are specially trained healthcare professionals who work under physician’s orders to provide a wide range of breathing treatment and other services to 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.

Fast/Accurate Radiology Report Distribution (January 2008)
Abbeville General Hospital's Imaging Services and Health Information Management department is pleased to announce an upgrade to the reporting process. This upgrade to Voice Recognition enables faster report turnaround times and improvement of patient care.

Instead of the Radiologist having to dictate their findings in a recorded sound wave file, and the Transcriptionist having to type out their dictation and the printed reports having to be reviewed and signed by the Radiologists, the Radiologists will now use voice recognition technology to dictate directly into our imaging server reports section. The reports will be typed by the computer using Voce Recognition. As soon as they are finished dictating, the reports are electronically signed by the Radiologist and are available for distribution.

Completed reports are then faxed to the ordering physician's office and printed to the nursing units for posting to the patients chart within minutes of being dictated by the Radiologist. This enhanced method of Radiology Interpretation/Report Distribution tremendously decreased the amount of time physicians and other care givers have to wait for interpreted Radiology results. Furthermore, utilizing the Picture Archival Communication System enables viewing of the completed reports instantly for physicians throughout the facility, i.e. Emergency Room nursing units & ICU, as well as, trusted sites via secured VPN access.

State-of-the-Art Technology
Abbeville General Hospital is proud to have “leading technology” such as the Echo Vivid 7 and Echo Pac Digital Network Solution System as its diagnostic tool to broaden the performance of non-invasive echocardiography testing. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Cardiac structure and flow information provided by echocardiography testing is useful in the detection and management of many types of heart disease.

Echocardiography (Ultrasound of the Heart) is a complex imaging technique that relies on the experience and training of both the physician and sonographer. Their interpretive and technical abilities determine the diagnostic accuracy of an echocardiographic exam.