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University Community Hospital Celebrates 40th Anniversary

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By JOYCE MCKENZIE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 22, 2008

UNIVERSITY AREA - Longtime University Community Hospital employee Gene Long describes his four-decade career as one that, since day one, has kept him in a "fast-forward to 40" mode.

Long's portrayal is typical of many of other well-seasoned employees who have spent all or most of their working years on the campus of a hospital that celebrated its 40th anniversary July 15. The week was filled with an array of community service events that culminated Saturday with an employee appreciation dinner for its 3,000-member staff at the University of South Florida Sun Dome.

Long began his job two weeks after the hospital opened in 1968 as a special procedure supervisor of the radiology department, a position he's has maintained all along. Back then, the department's only tool to diagnose injuries and illnesses was an X-ray machine.

"We could diagnose, but that was about the extent of it. We didn't do much intervention," said the 62-year-old New Tampa resident.

Fellow radiologist Kathleen Carvello, a 30-year employee of the hospital whom Long often calls his "work wife," also recalls another flaw in the X-ray system.

"We used to carry around heavy films and develop them only to find out they didn't take," she said.

But it wasn't long before Long and Carvello were introduced to state-of-the-art techniques with which they could both diagnose and treat many of their patients' health issues.

In June 1976, the hospital installed a computerized tomography scanner, the first of its kind on Florida's west coast. It allowed radiologists to take three-dimensional images of a person's internal organs.

Then, in January 1986, UCH became the first hospital in Tampa to have a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which uses magnetic signals, rather than X-rays, to create image slices of the human body.

"With these new technologies, we started doing things like digital angiographs," the process of inserting catheters into patients' hearts vessels to measure oxygen levels and pressure levels to determine blood blockage, Long said.

When he finds clogged arteries, he also has the capacity to perform an angioplasty, a minimally invasive procedure in which a balloon-tipped catheter is inserted into the vessels to widen them.

Long also has found success in relieving some patients' excruciating back pain caused by degenerative discs in their spines. In a 15-minute process called kyphoplasty, he inserts a cementlike substance between the damaged discs through a catheter.

"We started doing this a couple of years ago, and we are the No. 1 hospital for this kind of procedure," he said.

Long pointed out that he and his other radiology technologists are also capable of breaking up fibroid tumors through a digitally guided needle procedure that punctures the tissue masses.

"Because interventional radiology is changing so rapidly, we have probably been one of the fastest-growing departments of the hospital," Long added. "The patient volume is tremendous."

Long's wife, Tammy, the hospital's director of nursing recruitment and retention, has indirectly witnessed the radiology department's evolution.

"It's just amazing the things they've done to save lives," said Tammy Long, who is also in awe of her husband's loyalty to his job. "He never calls in sick, and he spends much of his life on call."

Major transformations also have taken place in the hospital's other medical services. Included were the March 1977 opening of UCH's first one-day surgery unit, the first such facility in Tampa; the June 1981 unveiling of its Bloodmobile, the first of its kind in the county; and the August 1985 opening of the UCH Diabetes Treatment Center, the first of its kind in West Central Florida.

The Pepin Heart Center opened in 1989. Since opening its doors in 1991, the Women's Center has recorded more than 38,000 births.

In 2001, UCH formed a hospital network that included UCH-Carrollwood, Sun Coast Hospital in Largo and Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs. The network of hospitals was named University Community Health.

Five years later, the Pepin Heart Hospital & Dr. Kiran C. Patel Research Institute celebrated itsÖ opening on the UCH campus with a gala featuring CNN's Larry King as the keynote speaker.

Norm Stein, the corporate president and chief executive officer of University Community Health, has spent 26 years as the leader of the nonprofit community hospital. UCH.

"When I came, I had a sixth sense that UCH would be an important part of the community," he said. "We've made a difference in everything we do."

Stein attributed the core of the hospital's success to its employees.

"We have more longtime employees than any other place I've worked. Why? It's because, I believe, we are more like a family," he said.

Reporter Joyce McKenzie can be reached at (813) 865-4849 or jmckenzie@tampatrib.com.

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