String of Updates Coming to Mesa View Hospital

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Mesa View Regional Hospital in Mesquite is gearing up for a host of new health care technology and services that it is offering soon to the community in the coming weeks. The Progress sat down this month with hospital CEO Kelly Adams to talk about the exciting lineup of new developments which is coming soon.

“My whole job here in Mesquite has been to grow a more robust health care delivery system for this area, including Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley,” Adams said in the interview. “And it is all starting to come together.”

Adams, who has been on the job at Mesa View since December of 2020, has spent the past year gathering and interpreting data about health care in the Mesa View coverage area.

“It has taken a year or so to understand the nuances that are unique here,” Adams said. “But once you can understand the data: what’s behind the insurances, what is behind the epidemiology of the community and more; then you can start focusing services on that data. I think we have finally lined all of that up. And what we are talking about now is the first change in moving the dial to the right direction.”

To start off those changes, late next month Mesa View will be offering a comprehensive range of cardiology services at the hospital.

“We are very excited about that!” Adams said. “We have actually struck a relationship with Intermountain Health Care Southwest Cardiology out of St. George to be on campus here. They have signed a lease and are expected to start seeing patients in late September.”

These specialists will be offering all the cardiology services up to and including a vascular catheterization laboratory.
“So on the vascular side we can call it a limb salvage program where someone who has stenosis of exterior veins or arteries that are closing up, we can help them right here,” Adams said. “Plus we will have all of the cardiology services here. It is exciting!”

In addition, Southwest Cardiology will be covering the Mesa View emergency room as well. “Our physicians in the ER will have 24/7 access to cardiology consulting,” Adams said. “That is a important addition.”

The hospital is also up for an extensive equipment update in the coming weeks, Adams said.
Last fall, the hospital announced that it had been selected as a recipient of a $1.7 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust organization. This grant is part of an $11.3 million grant program benefitting rural Nevada hospitals.
“With that, this hospital has been able to replace and update all of its imaging equipment,” Adams said. “That includes CT, X-ray, fluoroscopy, a mobile X-ray unit, 3D mammography, and ultrasound.

Everything is switching to state-of-the-art digital. So we can transfer things to physicians much easier in the blink of an eye.”

Adams said that it was time for this upgrade at the hospital. The imaging equipment at Mesa View was largely the same as was installed when the hospital first opened in 2004. He emphasized that the old equipment was still perfectly functional and able to stay in full use. But the new equipment will be the latest in state-of-the-art technology.
“The hospital has been operating for 18 years now and providing a good service to our community,”

Adams said. “But it is time to replace the equipment. It is time to change the course of the hospital to keep up with the growth of the community as well as keep current with technology. So it will be a change for the better which will, in turn, bring us more physicians and nurses.”

Outside of the grant, Mesa View has also upgraded all the equipment in the Operating Room of the hospital and has brought in new nurse monitoring equipment to monitor the vital signs of patients.

Finally Mesa View has updated and expanded its laboratory equipment and offerings.
“We are bringing, in-house, microbiology lab services that heretofore has had be sent out to be done,” Adams said. “So that is important for inpatients. We can do certain types of testing right here at the hospital for a quicker turnaround.”

For example, when a patient presents with an infection, the hospital would normally have had to send out the blood test lab work to be done. This could take 3-5 days to determine what the infection is.
“Now we will be able to do that testing and tell the results in real time, same day,” Adams said.

Another new development at Mesa View is to host a rural rotation residency program for physicians studying at University of Nevada, Reno and at UNLV, Adams said.
“That is a very big deal!” Adams said. “We will be included in the teaching hospital pool now. There is a lot of credibility that goes with being a teaching hospital.”

Adams said that the rotation will begin in rural family practice. This will be the program offered for the next year or so. Then an internal medicine rotation will be added.

A huge benefit to this is that the hospital will be able to attract new physicians to work here permanently, Adams said.
“Hopefully we will be able to attract one or two a year,” he said. “Not everybody wants big city medicine. A lot want to practice in a community where they can raise their family and get involved; where they know a vast number of the community and can enjoy a great lifestyle. Mesquite is great for that.”

Adams concluded by saying that all of these updates, and many more that are coming to the hospital, are aimed at solving the problem of outmigration from the community for health care needs.
“The community has asked me repeatedly,” Adams said. “People have said: ‘We are tired of going to Las Vegas. We are tired of driving to St. George. Please help us find ways to keep our healthcare here local. So this is an answer to those types of issues.”