Crime & Safety
Hospital Donates State-of-the-Art Equipment to Wyandotte Fire Department
EKG devices send information instantly to emergency room computers and cardiologists' cell phones.
Heart attack patients in Wyandotte soon will get life-saving emergency care better than ever, thanks to a donation made Wednesday by to the city’s .
Two new 12-lead EKG devices called Life Paks, which electronically transmit vital medical information directly to hospital emergency room personnel and on-call cardiologists’ cell phones, were donated by the hospital to the Wyandotte Fire Department.
Others were donated to two other Downriver fire departments–Lincoln Park and Allen Park–that often bring patients by ambulance to the busy Wyandotte emergency department, which sees more than 65,000 patients a year.
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“This is the second set they bought for us,” Wyandotte Fire Chief Michael MacDonald said. “We’ve had a couple of really good saves because of this equipment. It’s a really good diagnostic tool.”
In fact, one of the devices was used when Mayor Joseph Peterson, who was on hand for the donation ceremony, fell ill some time ago, MacDonald said.
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The Life Pak quickly told paramedics and hospital personnel that the mayor’s heart was just fine. He had pneumonia then, and is doing well today.
The Life Pak devices “have been dropped out of helicopters in Afghanistan and they haven’t broken,” said Dr. Thomas McKeown, medical director of emergency medicine at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital.
He praised the portable Life Paks, and explained how they transmit a patient’s information via modem “instantly to our computers” and to cardiologists on call at the same time.
“This is a game changer,” McKeown said. “This is state-of-the-art stuff.”
Paramedics bringing in a patient who is having a heart attack can be met at the door by emergency room personnel. Emergency room staff will already be up to speed on exactly what’s going on and be ready to go to work. The devices can shave off many minutes of response time, and when it comes to heart attacks, every minute makes a big difference to a patient’s life.
“The better the communication between the emergency response team, the hospital and our cardiology staff, the better outcomes there are for the patient,” McKeown said. “This donation is just another example of Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital’s commitment to the Downriver community and the partnerships we have with our local fire departments.”
fire departments are hard-pressed to update equipment, making the hospital donation even more meaningful, MacDonald said.
“We are very thankful for Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital’s generous donation,” the fire chief added. “These devices will definitely improve patient care across the board.”
The donation of the equipment, valued at $203,000, will be paid for by proceeds from the hospital’s gift shop run by its Volunteer Auxiliary, which recently donated a digital mammography machine to the Henry Ford Health Center in Brownstown Township.
The modems for the Life Pak devices are expected to come in next week, when hospital officials and paramedics will key in the important phone numbers for transmission. And soon, the new technology will be on the road, helping Wyandotte firefighters save lives.
