Just over a week after 200 mile-per-hour winds tore through St. John's Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., surgeons were back to work operating on patients at the disaster site, thanks to 2 tractor trailer-sized mobile surgical facilities stationed at the 30-bed field hospital set up there.
Mobile Medical International Corporation (MMIC) dispatched two of its state-of-the-art Mobile Surgery Units to Joplin in the wake of the storm, which forced evacuation of the hospital and claimed the lives of 5 patients who had been on ventilators when the facility lost power. The first unit arrived on Friday, May 27, and the first surgery was performed there the following Monday. Another unit arrived on May 31.
"During the two weeks since the tornado, MMIC got these units set up so quickly — the units are amazing," said Charles Ro, MD, the first St. John's surgeon to operate in the Mobile Surgery Units, which MMIC describes as "essentially a hospital on wheels."
It's not the first time the company has deployed the units in the wake of a natural disaster. MMIC also provided 2 mobile surgical facilities and a Mobile Recovery Care Unit at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston after 2009's Hurricane Ike.
"It has been equally meaningful to me, and to our MMIC employees, to be able to help St. John's Hospital continue to offer high-quality medical care to the population of Joplin, Missouri, during such a terrible disaster," said MMIC owner Rick Cochran, who was named 2011 National Small Business Person on the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration last month.
Irene Tsikitas
Photos courtesy of Mobile Medical International Corporation.
