Million-dollar renovation advances emergency care in Harvey

“We’ve had the good fortune of having a board of directors that’s been willing to gamble, or ‘live on the edge,’ so to speak, in this wilderness area, and put money forward to purchase the type of technical equipment that physicians require.”

A project to renovate the emergency room and invest in state-of-the-art equipment at St. Aloisius Hospital, Harvey, ND, received tremendous support from people in the area, says Rocky Zastoupil, CEO and president of St. Aloisius Hospital.

“The community recognized the huge need to upgrade facilities and equipment,” he says, by supporting a major, $1 million fund-raising effort.  The nearly completed project includes the addition of digital x-ray and CT scan equipment.

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With these advancements “we can perform more tests here,” Zastoupil says, and “we can keep people here who should stay here, and we can send those away who should receive care” at larger centers.

Considering today’s “world technology, it really doesn’t matter anymore where the facility is located,” he says.  For example, a radiologist can read an x-ray “on-line, 24/7 and we can have the results within a half-hour.  That’s huge.”

Zastoupil credits Charles Nyhus, M.D. ’79 (Family Medicine Residency ’82), who has practiced in Harvey for 25 years, and Julie Keller, PA ’94, who has cared for patients there for many years, along with Alan Lindemann, M.D. ’77, as helping to provide the “critical” services that sustains health care in their rural community.