The success of Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals is in large part due to its cooperative nature of delivering patient care. Marrying the generalists and community setting at Faulkner with the specialists and the urban setting at BWH, BW/F has proven to be a dynamic three-year partnership that has enhanced the care for patients in the greater Boston area.
For the Departments of Medicine and Surgery, partnerships were forged early and logistics have been relatively smooth. In fact, about 2,500 surgical procedures were performed at Faulkner in 2001. In addition, the medical residency program at Faulkner is flourishing as young physicians are exposed to the community teaching hospital setting, which they can then compare and contrast to BWH’s urban teaching hospital setting.
More recently, certain BWH and Faulkner hospital-based physician departments have started to work on a process that would more closely align Faulkner/BWH services.
Radiology has taken the lead in this collaboration. The Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Department of Radiology is taking shape and is slated to be finalized by mid-summer. At the helm of this pairing are Steven Seltzer, MD, chair of BWH Radiology and Norman Sadowsky, MD, chair of Faulkner Radiology.
As part of a newly expanded Radiology suite, a new MRI scanner and CT scanner have recently been delivered to Faulkner Hospital and are beginning to be used for patient care this spring. The new CT scanner will enable a 33 percent increase in imaging volume and the new MRI is slated to increase capacity by at least 20 percent over the next year.