MARY REED

Dr. Mike Ibach explains a procedure to a patient at the Skyline Endoscopy Center.

The new Skyline Endoscopy Center (SEC) in Jackson, housed in Medical Specialty Clinic’s building, offers patients the convenience of providing colonoscopy and other endoscopic procedures outside of the hospital setting.

Drs. Charles Hertz, Robert Hollis, Michael Ibach and Dan Kayal --are performing procedures at the new center. All are board-certified gastroenterologists, who specialize in diagnosing and treating problems of the gastrointestinal tract and liver, and who practice at Medical Specialty Clinic (MSC).

The center, located at 27 Medical Center Drive, will have a ribbon cutting and open house from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 1. Area physicians and medical personnel, representatives from business and industry as well as others interested in what the center offers are welcome at the open house.

“We want people to be aware of the convenience and cost-savings that the center offers patients,” said Hollis.

Ibach explained that building the endoscopy center just made sense for MSC gastroenterologists. “We do a lot of endoscopic procedures in our practice,” he said. “Most of these procedures can be safely and less expensively done in an outpatient surgery center. Most are done on healthy patients who have a low risk of complications and who don’t need to be in a hospital environment. SEC will be much more convenient and intimate for the patient and make us more efficient in our practice of medicine.”

The same equipment with highly trained nurses providing the same level of experience and care as those at the hospital, will be there to serve at the endoscopy center, Ibach said.

Outpatient procedures being done at SEC include primarily colonoscopy, to examine the large intestine and rectum for pre-cancerous polyps and other pathology, and upper endoscopy, to evaluate the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum for gastrointestinal tract conditions of various kinds including ulcer disease. Several other ancillary procedures are also performed including dilation of esophageal strictures, which often cause swallowing problems.

High-risk patients and those preferring a hospital setting can still have their procedures performed at the hospital by MSC gastroenterologists, Ibach added.

Hertz noted that having the endoscopy center onsite also will allow MSC physicians to look into clinical research opportunities. “These opportunities would not be available to us without the endoscopy center,” he said. “And often these studies allow us to make available to our patients promising new drugs not yet available in the marketplace.”

Most of the patients who will be scheduled for procedures at SEC will initially be referred to one of the clinic’s gastroenterologists by other physicians, though patients can, in most cases, be seen without a referral. All will first be seen and evaluated by one of the gastroenterologists before any procedures are scheduled, Kayal said.

The 5,600-square-foot endoscopy center has three procedure rooms and nine pre-procedure and recovery beds. Patients will enter the center through a waiting room shared with Medical Specialty Clinic’s GI practice. Procedures are currently being done every weekday, except Tuesday, and two Saturdays a month. Hours may be expanded in the future.



April 2008