Promise Healthcare First Long-Term Acute Care (LTAC) Facility to Install Samsung Neurologica Bodytom Portable CT Scanner

Samsung NeuroLogica Corporation, the healthcare subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and a leading provider of advanced imaging solutions, announced today that Promise Hospital of Florida at The Villages has installed the BodyTom 32-slice portable computed tomography (CT) scanner into its long-term acute care (LTAC) facility. After six successful months of piloting the BodyTom at The Villages, Promise hospitals in Miami and Fort Myers also installed their own BodyTom scanners.

In long-term acute care facilities, patients often suffer from conditions that make transport to local hospitals a risky process. Having a BodyTom at a long-term care facility eliminates the risk and expense of ambulance transport for patients in need of CT scans and whose conditions can include ventilator care, high-cost/high-dose antibiotics, complex wound care and other needs that complicate moving them off-premises.

“It’s hard for any patient to take an ambulance ride, and when most of our patients come out of critical-care or intensive-care settings – they often have a list of conditions that fill almost two pages,” said hospital CEO Hoyt Ross. “Having the BodyTom on-premises could reduce some patients’ length of stay because it sometimes takes time for them to recover from the trip and get back to baseline.”

Promise chose the BodyTom over larger, stationary CT scanners because it requires less overhead for new construction and infrastructure. Ross said that the BodyTom will also be used by patients in the community on a referral basis, opening access to a new outpatient resource in The Villages and surrounding towns.

BodyTom, the world’s first portable, full-body, 32-slice CT scanner, is a multi-departmental imaging solution capable of transforming any room in the hospital into an advanced imaging suite. The System features an 85cm gantry and 60cm field of view, the largest field of view available in a portable CT scanner. Uniquely designed to accommodate patients of all sizes, BodyTom provides point-of-care CT imaging wherever high-quality CT images are needed, including the LTAC settings, operating rooms, intensive care units, radiation oncology suites and emergency departments.

“The BodyTom offers features and portability especially suited for facilities like Promise Healthcare’s. It was chosen instead of a typical fixed CT installation that would have required prohibitive capital outlay,” said Philip Sullivan, Samsung NeuroLogica President and CEO. “The BodyTom will help to reinforce Promise Hospital of Florida at The Villages’ commitment to delivering high-quality and safe patient care.”