Noteworthy | News and events | Working Together NY ASCs collaborated to solve problems at the height of COVID-19 Although not in the most ideal circumstances, the COVID-19 pandemic did bring healthcare providers together. In the New York region, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), hospitals, and other healthcare organizations worked together to develop partnerships for common issues like COVID-19 testing, access to supplies, and even human resources-related concerns. One participant in this collaboration was PE partner Endoscopy Center of Western New York. The center teamed up with local ambulatory surgery centers to push state legislators, perform more elective procedures in open counties, and secure critical PPE supplies and COVID-19 tests. “If we didn’t have each other, this would have been a much different road,” Patricia Graham, administrator at Endoscopy Center of Western New York told Buffalo Business First. “Yes, they’re our competition, but we all have things we may need. It was great to have someone to lean on and share ideas.”
PE Partners had a successful Colon Cancer Awareness Month
To kick off Colon Cancer Awareness Month, PE partners participated in numerous ways to talk to the public about the importance of colorectal cancer screenings. With the coronavirus pandemic causing reduced rates in screenings for all types of cancer, this year’s Colon Cancer Awareness Month was particularly important. PE Partner C.P. Choudari, MD, of the Endoscopy Center at Robinwood sat down with The Herald Mail to debunk common colonoscopy myths and encourage people to schedule their routine screening. Dr. Choudari explained how preventable colorectal cancer is when caught early and why that makes it important for people to get screened. He also explained that the colonoscopy process is not nearly as difficult as it once
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was: “People are scared of the preparation. People are afraid of having pain. Those two things have been taken care of,” he told the newspaper. Also encouraging people to get screened was William Stern, MD, FACG, of Capital Digestive Care (CDC). Dr. Stern appeared on ABC 7 (WJLA-TV in the Washington, D.C., area) to discuss the new HyGieaCare technology and the CDC HyGieaCare® Center in Rockville, Maryland. The CDC center is just the fifth center in the United States to offer this FDAapproved system. “It allows a patient to avoid taking the usual, standard oral prep, which makes them run to the bathroom all night … [and] instead they come in the morning of the procedure—about an hour and a half before … and just gently wash out their colon,” Dr. Stern told ABC 7 News.
Learn more about how PE participated in Colon Cancer Awareness Month at pegisolutions.com.
iStock.com/Morsa Images, Chinnapong
Time for Screenings
