Working Wonders

Nuclear medicine colleagues turn unused doses into savings

The nuclear medicine team (clockwise from far left): Samuel Cocchimiglio, Bernard Valasek, Amy Grab, Kathleen Jones, Susan Morgan, Leslie Bidden, Mark Seagreaves, Demitria Cachia, Carin Keglovics, Amy Horvath, Tiffany Delillo and Teresa Beers.

A new imaging agent for nuclear medicine’s cardiac stress tests meant great things for our patients: better images of the heart and more accurate diagnoses. But there was one drawback: the cost.

Because the agent is made of radioactive material with a shorter half-life (it must be used within a specific time frame), canceled appointments meant wasted doses. To defray that expense and still provide the clearest heart images, nuclear medicine team members developed a plan. They contacted the supplier of the agent, who agreed to reimburse the hospital for one unused dose for every
20 purchased.

“We work as a team to log and ship the unused dosages back to the vendor for verification and credit on a weekly basis,” says technologist Bernard Valasek.

This Working Wonders idea results in an annual savings of more than $9,500.

How It Adds Up
IDEA Defraying cost of unused cardiac imaging agent
BY Nuclear medicine team
ANNUAL SAVINGS $9,540
AWARD AMOUNT $1,431 total

Submit an idea at home on www.lvh.org, at the hospital on www.lvh.com, via the e-mail W-W_Submissions bulletin board, or via interoffice mail to Jacqueline Straley, management engineering.

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